Will France end up like Italy? What will happen after the elections

For some, France will end up like the United Kingdom with Brexit. For others, an Italian scenario awaits her: technical governments, shaky majorities and political instability. Let’s see together why, a few hours before the first round of the French legislative elections, panic is breaking out across Europe.

On Eurofocus, the Adnkronos portal dedicated to news about Europe and from Europe, we are back talking about French elections. The first round will be Sunday 30 June, the second after a week, on 7 July. Macron’s gamble of dissolving the National Assembly, much criticized even within his party, is causing fear not only to the markets, which foresee months if not years of instability, but also to political scientists, jurists, experts in various capacities on more or less apocalyptic. Let’s take the two most interesting scenarios. The first sees the victory of the Rassemblement national, which Marine Le Pen is keen to define as neither right nor left, but only patriotic. The party line has always been Eurosceptic and hostile to NATO and the United States. Even if Macron would retain the power to decide the country’s foreign and defense policy, a government and a parliamentary majority in the hands of Jordan Bardella and Le Pen would make his life very difficult. This is why there are those who compare the president’s decision to call a snap election to David Cameron’s decision to “concede” the referendum on Brexit. A wrong bet which then gets out of hand and puts the country on a collision course with its main interlocutor, namely Europe. Although a Frexit can be ruled out, Macron’s defeat would be the defeat of his European project, which ranges from defense to technology, from financial market reforms to the issuance of common debt. In the coming years, France will be one of the thorns in the side of the Brussels institutions.

The second scenario opens with a parliament without a majority. Neither the right, nor the left, nor even the center reach the fateful threshold of 289 deputies. What happens at that point? It cannot be done as in Spain or Israel, and quickly return to the polls: the president can dissolve the chambers a second time only after 12 months. So somehow a government must be formed. Bardella has promised that he will not accept the role of prime minister without a clear majority (but it remains to be seen whether he would really back down when faced with the offer of such an important seat). In France they are not used to governments of national unity. The only coalitions were created between parties from the same political area. Would the Macronists make an agreement with the maximalist left of the nouveau front populaire? Or with the Rassemblement national? At the moment, it seems very difficult.

And then there are those, like the newspaper politica.eu, who imagine an Italian scenario. As Napolitano called Mario Monti or Mattarella did with Draghi, Macron could summon Christine Lagarde, whose mandate as president of the ECB expires in 2027, to become prime minister of a caretaker government and calm the markets. If not you, then Jean Claude Trichet, who at least is retired, another former central banker who is however a little getting on in years. Alternatively, the names of two or three reserves of the republic are mentioned, including the centrist Charles de Courson, long-standing politicians who could, like tamers in a circus, move between the far right and the far left. However, no one knows how such a government could, for example, prepare the budget law in the autumn and then have it voted on by a divided and quarrelsome national assembly. Certainly, a French technical government could not do as the Monti government did: no unpopular reforms, but management of the ordinary without great impulses on pensions, unions, farmers. Which would force both the Rassemblement National and the nouveau front populaire to give up all their expensive electoral promises.

Benjamin Morel, who teaches public law at the Pantheon-Assas University, explained to Le Figaro that a new government without a clear majority could fall within a week, struck down by a motion of no confidence. To approve the budget there is a constitutional “trick”, article 47, which in the absence of a parliamentary vote allows the budget to be adopted with a government ordinance. The problem is that, sooner or later, the Assembly and the Senate must vote on it. And not even Macron’s resignation would solve the problem: if there is no majority in parliament, a new president would change almost nothing. In short, in this 2024 which has become famous for being the most important electoral year in recent decades, the vote that can upset the European balance is the only one that was not scheduled, namely the French one. On Eurofocus we will follow it step by step, so don’t miss our podcasts and insights on our website.