1/7/2024Updated yesterday at 21:59|Source: ČTK, Euronews, ČT24
Events: French nationalists won the first round of parliamentary elections (source: ČT24)
In France, 75 deputies won a mandate in the National Assembly already in the first round of Sunday’s elections, which is significantly more than was usual in previous elections. A large part of this is due to the high turnout, which was 66.71 percent. Marine Le Pen’s National Association won 37 seats, the left-wing coalition won 32 seats, according to data from the French Ministry of the Interior. President Emmanuel Macron already called on the French on Sunday to vote against the far right in the second round. Government centrists are joining forces with the left-wing New People’s Front, at least 179 candidates have already preliminarily renounced their participation in supporting the candidate who has the best chance of defeating the politicians of the National Association.
In order to win a seat already in the first round, it is necessary to have over fifty percent of the votes cast, and at the same time, the votes must represent at least 25 percent of the registered voters.
These conditions according to the French Ministry of the Interior fulfilled by 37 candidates of the far-right National Association (RN). The head of his deputies, Marine Le Pen, has already won the mandate, she received 58 percent of the vote in Pas-de-Calais in the north of France. Her party scored especially in the north of the country and then also in the south itself, it is traditionally very weak in Paris and its surroundings. Overall, the RN has 29.25 percent of the vote, its allies another three percent and two seats.
The National Association thus won five million more votes in the first round of the parliamentary elections than in the same vote in 2022. The RN voted for 9.3 million French people. 66.7 percent of voters went to the polls, the highest since 1997.
Compared to 2022, the leftist alliance also improved by three million votes, which received roughly nine million. The New People’s Front won 32 mandates in the first round, and over 400 of its candidates advanced to the second round. In 131 cases, this happened from third place, and it can be expected that most of these candidates will abandon their participation in the second round in an attempt to join forces against the far right.
In total, the left bloc received 28 percent of the vote. For example, Mathilde Panot, the head of deputies of the Unsubdued France (LFI) party, Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialists, and Sandrine Rousseau for the Greens defended their place in the lower house of parliament, reports Le Figaro.
The government camp received twenty percent of the votes and only two of its candidates made it to parliament in the first round. However, most members of the government have difficulty getting into parliament, the French media write. In his Hauts-de-Seine district, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has a relatively solid position for the second round, having received almost 44 percent of the vote. His foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, leads in the neighboring district with 46 percent. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, won 36 percent of the votes in the Nord district, with the RN candidate trailing him by less than two points.
The National Association is supposed to stop the collaboration of centrists with the left
The second round of elections in all 501 of the 577 constituencies where no one won a mandate in the first round will take place on July 7. It is the second round that will decide the composition of the National Assembly, and therefore the future government and orientation of France in the next five years. Due to the complex system of single-member constituencies, estimates of overall results are very complex and imprecise.
This is also confirmed by the correspondent of CT in France, Jan Šmíd. “The results after the first round are only relative,” he said. Now, according to him, a completely new situation is emerging, when in individual constituencies it happens that the third candidate resigns in favor of a politician who can stop the National Association. “That’s the biggest trend,” added the correspondent.
In a record 306 constituencies, three candidates advanced to the second race thanks to the high voter turnout, and in five constituencies even four candidates. The condition for advancing to the second round was to receive the votes of at least 12.5 percent of registered voters. In virtually all of these races, an RN candidate is present. There will be 190 duels on Sunday, only 46 of which will not feature a candidate from the National Association.
France knows the results of the first round of early parliamentary elections (source: ČT24)
In order to stop the rise of the extreme right, representatives of the left and the president’s centrist camp called on their fellow parties, who advanced from third place, to withdraw from the second round. In the districts with RN in the second round, the left has 126 such candidates and the government coalition has ninety. According to Le Monde, 121 and 56 candidates have given up their candidacy.
The president’s bloc wants to agree on an alliance against the nationalist candidates for the second round. He has a lot of support for that, but it may not apply in all constituencies. However, Macron declared after the first round that he would not lean towards any camp. “Immediately after the first round, he changed this position significantly, saying that the National Association must be prevented at all costs from having a majority,” Šmíd explained later.
Macron called for the election of the left
According to political commentator and former ambassador to France Petr Janyška, the second round of the elections will be a huge fight. “Only on Tuesday night will we see who will actually go against each other in the second round, that is, if they withdraw or not. And it will also be important what the (president’s) voters do. It’s going to be very vague in that regard,” he preemptively shot.
President Emanuel Macron already called on the French last night to vote for the candidates of the left-wing New People’s Front and thus not allow the National Association to win definitively, Šmíd explained. “Apart from the National Association, the main winner is the New People’s Front, whose candidates have the support of the government coalition, and can thus ensure that the National Association does not have a majority,” summed up Šmíd.
This is probably also why French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, after his defeat in the parliamentary elections, temporarily abandoned the controversial reform of unemployment benefits, which was supposed to come into force on Monday. The reform was criticized by trade unions, the extreme right and the left, and Attal’s concession is thus supposed to be a helpful step before the second round of elections, which is supposed to facilitate precisely the agreements between the government camp and the left bloc for mutual support of candidates in individual constituencies.
GALERIE
The French protested against the far-right National Association party after the partial results of the first round of parliamentary elections
According to Attal, the main thing is to stop the extreme right
This intention was also confirmed by left-wing leaders including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who heads the far-left party Unsubdued France (LFI), who said they would withdraw all candidates who came third in their constituencies to avoid splitting votes against Le Pen.
But that puts pressure on the ruling camp to return the favor and do for leftist candidates what leftist voters have repeatedly done for Macron when facing the far right. Prime Minister Attal will almost certainly lose the prime minister’s seat, which will go to someone from a stronger left-wing bloc. According to him, the main task for the second round is to deprive the extreme right of the chance to win an absolute majority in the parliament. It was against the strengthening of the extreme right that thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Paris after the preliminary results were published.
Horizon ČT24: ČT reporter Jan Šmíd on possible strategies for the second round of the French elections (source: ČT24)
The ruling party has announced it will also withdraw its third-place candidates, but only in constituencies where the remaining RN opponent “shares our republican values”, suggesting it is likely to refuse to withdraw candidates in favor of Mélenchon’s LFI, which Macron’s camp has described as “extremist”.
According to the reporter, the dissolution of the National Assembly three weeks ago ended the era of Macron and “Macronism”. After his election, euphoria swept the country and a large group of people formed to support the president. But that is already gone and his role will be significantly weakened, assesses the consequences of the elections, Šmíd.
The RN’s success in the first round of the French elections was welcomed by nationalists and far-right groups across Europe, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Spain’s Vox party. Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, on the other hand, stated that the left-wing parties can still prevent the RN’s total victory.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed concern over the rise of the far right in France and compared it, among other things, to growing domestic support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD). “No one can remain indifferent (…) if a political party that sees Europe as a problem, not a solution, rises to the top of our closest partner and best friend,” said Baerbock.
The new cabinet may not last long
However, according to commentator Janyška, nothing can be ruled out at this moment. According to him, Macron is now aiming for a large union of democratic forces. “If it were successful, a government would be formed with the participation of both the center right and Macron’s centrist camp, as well as the moderate left – that is, a kind of government of national reconciliation,” said Janyška.
If, in the second round, the National Association did not obtain a supermajority, but it would be very close to it, then according to Janyška, the party will negotiate with the Republicans, and it cannot be ruled out that they would ultimately enable the government of the extreme right, the expert believes. According to him, the government of the National Association is not only dangerous because of its program, but also because it is “a party of amateurs who have never been in government and have no experience in governing”.
Moreover, the new government may not last long. The President can dissolve the National Assembly again after a year and call another parliamentary election.
The former ambassador to the country thinks that the election is not a battle between the greater and lesser evil, as some media suggest, but rather between democracy and the extreme right, whose roots are still close to fascism.
A political commentator and former ambassador to France evaluates the results of the first round of parliamentary elections (source: ČT24)