Monday, June 9, marked one year since Emmanuel Macron’s surprise move to call snap elections to the National Assembly. It was a perilous move for the second-term president — ending four weeks later with a hung parliament in which his own camp was reduced to a minority. The debate on what actually pushed Macron to call the vote continues apace.
Yet one thing is already abundantly clear: Macron’s gamble only fueled France’s slow-burning political crisis. Today parliament is even more fractured than it was before the contest, split between a splintered left-wing alliance, a retreating centrist-conservative bloc, and a rising far right. A steady clip of opinion polls show a wider falloff of public trust in the country’s political institutions.
Macron has tried to save face by focusing on foreign affairs — while leaning on minority, center-right coalition governments to shore up his domestic agenda. His first avatar was Michel Barnier, who briefly became prime minister in September 2024. Already by December, Barnier’s government fell to a no-confidence vote. A rehashed administration, this time fronted by longtime Macron ally François Bayrou, eked through a budget just a few weeks later. But its political hands have been tied, only surviving thanks to the good graces of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which boasts a growing list of policy victories.
Yet Macron may have the last laugh, on one point at least. If the June 2024 dissolution of the National Assembly was part of a grand plan, then one key aim was surely to keep France’s fractious left-wing parties divided. Instead, ahead of last summer’s election the four main parties of the Left — La France Insoumise (LFI), the Parti Socialiste (PS), Les Écologistes, and…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
