quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Macron's center bloc of 152-158 may go with the Socialists and Greens, but likely not with the Communists and the anti-EU "France Unbowed" - rather they might want to include the conservative Republicans in a broad coalition with themselves as the biggest partner, providing the prime minister. Either way, Macron right now really can lean back and watch the left bloc struggle with itself while the current government stays on in a caretaker role, or appoint a left-wing PM and watch him struggle with no majority of his own in parliament. Then there's the question how the outcome will inform Marine Le Pen's decision with whom to go in the EU parliament, where the Right is currently trying to sort itself between a faction led by Italian PM Georgia Meloni, and one led by Hungarian PM Viktor Orban; that's a whole extra can of worms.

Nothing solid yet, but maybe a pointer towards things to come.

quote:

Macron wins shock vote to keep coalition hopes alive

Pro-Macron and center-right lawmakers successfully pulled their votes together to stop the left from grabbing control of the National Assembly.

JULY 18, 2024 8:46 PM CET
BY VICTOR GOURY-LAFFONT

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s party formed a last-minute agreement with right-leaning lawmakers to win a key vote in parliament on Thursday that opens the door to the French president playing a greater-than-expected role in forming the country’s next government.

The two political groups put together an ad-hoc alliance to reelect Yaël Braun-Pivet as head of the French National Assembly, the fourth highest-ranking official in France. The vote was widely seen as a test of who could work together in France’s fractured parliament to name a future prime minister.

In combining forces, the centrists and the center right seized political momentum while also delivering a stunning blow to their rivals further to the left.

Braun-Pivet’s win “makes it likely that Macron will be able to appoint a prime minister from his camp,” Matthieu Hocque, a political analyst at the Millénaire public policy think tank in Paris, said. “In France’s modern history, the president of the National Assembly has always been in the same camp as the prime minister, it would be historical if it were not to be the case.”

Thursday’s dramatic vote came just 11 days after the New Popular Front (NFP), a broad alliance of left-wing parties, secured a surprise victory in this summer’s snap election, winning the most seats but falling far short of an outright majority.

The inconclusive result of the election pushed French politics into turmoil, threatening the EU’s second-biggest economy with months or even years of political paralysis.

But Thursday night’s vote in the National Assembly indicates that a narrow path through the deadlock may be in sight.

The contest came down to the wire. After the center right withdrew its own candidate following the first round of the three-round vote, Braun-Pivet and her opponent from the left, Communist lawmaker André Chassaigne, found themselves separated by just eight votes. Braun-Pivet ended up winning thanks to the support of just a few unaffiliated lawmakers.

Despite their success through unity, Macron’s camp and the conservatives may not continue their partnership.

A conservative lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the newly formed Republican Right political group would take a step-by-step approach, focusing its efforts at this stage on securing key positions in the National Assembly rather than discussing building a government together. The Republican Right has formally registered as being part of the opposition, the lawmaker added.

The conservatives had previously publicly rejected the prospect of an outright coalition with the pro-Macron camp, but they have steadily signaled their openness to finding common ground on policy — putting forward a “legislative package” focused on policies aimed at “better recognizing work and restoring authority.”

The NFP, meanwhile, now looks closer to collapsing than ever before. The alliance’s bickering and infighting prevented it from rallying behind a single candidate for prime minister, and even agreeing on Chassaigne — a congenial and well-respected parliamentarian — required negotiations that lasted until the day before the vote.

[...]

https://www.politico.eu/articl...-elections-2024-nfp/

Meanwhile at the European level, Marine Le Pen went with the Orban camp in the EU Parliament. This makes distribution of the total 720 seats between the groups there as follows:

- European People's Party (Christian Democrats, center-right): 188

- Socialists & Democrats (center-left): 136

- Patriots for Europe (far right; this is Orban's crew, with Le Pen's RN the strongest national party after their accession): 84

- European Conservatives and Reformers (right-wing; used to be dominated by the British Tories before Brexit, now Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia are the strongest national party): 78

- Renew (classical liberals and centrists, including Macron's alliance): 77

- Greens/European Free Alliance (progressives and regionalists, left-wing): 53

- The Left (far left): 46

- Europe of Sovereign Nations (really far out there on the right): 25

- Unaffiliated: 32

While the center and left-wing groups have been pretty stable in their organization over the history of the parliament since 1979, those on the right have sorted themselves anew more frequently. The right-wing ECR was formed in 2009 under the lead of the British Conservatives over disagreements on centralism vs. federalism with others in the center-right EPP they were previously members of. The far Right has been organized under various names, latterly Identity and Democracy, with the party of Le Pen and her father before her under its own various names typically the strongest. Orban's Fidesz also used to be part of the EPP, but (were) left in 2021 over their attitude towards the EU, and had since been unaffiliated.

Around the recent European elections there were competing attempts at coalition-building, with Commission president Ursula von der Leyen seeking the votes of MEPs ranging from the Greens to Meloni's FdI for her re-election. Meanwhile there were also drives to unite the right-wing camp in a group as big as possible, hindered by factionalism and divergences in radicalism. The German far-right AfD became a major destructive force when they made MEP Maximilian Krah their top candidate despite warnings from within the party; in 2022 already, fellow MEPs wrote a letter to the party leadership complaining about his lack of colleaguality and his blatant pro-Chinese propaganda; the same year, he was temporarily suspended from the then-ID group for endorsing Le Pen's far-right rival Eric Zemmour in the French presidential elections. In 2023, right-wing magazine "The European Conservative" reported on suspicions that a Chinese staffer of Krah was in fact an agent for the PRC.

By early 2024, Le Pen was already irritated by hyped reports about a right-wing meeting including members of the AfD near Berlin which allegedly discussed "re-migrating" even immigrants with German citizenship, running counter to her efforts to "de-demonize" her RN, distance it from the open anti-Semitism of her father's days, and make it overall more electable. Then Krah's Chinese staffer was actually arrested on espionage charges, at which point AfD leadership took the unusual step of banning their own top candidate from campaigning for the election. Which he largely ignored, with in-party critics saying he wasn't interested in a good overall result anyway since candidates on lower slots of the AfD's election list were not his guys, and he prefered ruling over a smaller, but loyal conference; and not under Le Pen either, rather than a "hooligan caucus" further to the right dominated by the German members.

The last straw was when Krah told an Italian newspaper he'd never generalize that any member of the SS was a criminal. After which Le Pen had the AfD kicked out of the ID group; they finished way below their German poll numbers from the start of the year in the EU elections, too, ending up with just below 16 rather than up to 24 percent in the national results. Afterwards, the AfD conference in the European Parliament in turn kicked out Krah in hope of getting back on Le Pen's good side, but to no avail. At that point Le Pen was mulling whether to go with Orban's new Patriots for Europe, or replacing Meloni's FdI as the strongest party in the "more electable" ECR. Missing victory in the French elections seems to have made her do the former.

The AfD eventually ended up forming the separate really-far-right ESN under their leadership, essentially fulfilling Krah's wish - just without Krah, who remains excluded from their conference and is now an unaffiliated MEP. OTOH, Ursula von der Leyen's courtship of a broad coalition seems to have succeeded, since she was re-elected as Commission president yesterday with 401:284 votes, quite a bit better than the 383:327 of her first run in 2019.

Looking in on the French system from the outside, it almost looks as if they could use a 'wheel of fortune' and just spin it and go immediately to the political wrangling portion. Two elections? Two spins. Why bother the people with all this?

As you were:

quote:

Anger after Macron rejects France left-wing government

15 hours ago

French President Emmanuel Macron has yet to name a new prime minister to end the political deadlock. In response, LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has called for a "motion of impeachment."

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday dismissed the idea of naming a left-wing government to end the country's political deadlock, in a move that sparked anger among the country's leftist alliance.

Macron said that having a left-wing government would threaten "institutional stability," in comments that riled the New Popular Front (NFP).

The left-wing alliance is made up of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialists, the Communists and the Greens. The NFP secured the most seats in the country's parliamentary election earlier this summer.

Green Party leader Marine Tondelier said Macron's announcement was a disgrace, adding that he was ignoring the election results. France Unbowed's parliamentary group leader Mathilde Panot even threatened Macron with impeachment.

[...]

Macron argued that he could not choose a prime minister who would then receive a vote of no confidence in parliament.

"My responsibility is that the country is not blocked nor weakened," Macron said in a presidential statement late on Monday, calling on "all political leaders to rise to the occasion by demonstrating a spirit of responsibility."

LFI blasts 'anti-democratic coup'

The LFI reacted with fury, with its national coordinator Manuel Bompard calling Macron's remarks an "unacceptable anti-democratic coup."

LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon called for a "firm and strong response" by the public and politicians, including a "motion of impeachment" against the president.

Communist party leader Fabien Roussel called for a "grand popular mobilization" and ruled out a fresh round of talks.

Green party leader Tondelier said, "the people must get rid of Macron for the good of democracy. He is chaos and instability."

Who Macron chooses as prime minister remains to be seen, especially as they would need to secure the support of the divided parliament. Monday's developments suggest there is no imminent end in sight to France's political crisis.

https://www.dw.com/en/anger-af...overnment/a-70055758

Kids today always scream "coup!" if they don't get their will, of course.

Typical Lefties.

Jean-Luc Melenchon has a big mouth but, someone needs to remind him (not like I care for this alliance) that he's a minority partner in this coalition.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Macron's center bloc of 152-158 may go with the Socialists and Greens, but likely not with the Communists and the anti-EU "France Unbowed" - rather they might want to include the conservative Republicans in a broad coalition with themselves as the biggest partner, providing the prime minister.

Well they got themselves a government including the conservative Republicans, notably with one of the latter as prime minister; which is widely seen as a bid to garner support from the Right in parliament. Let's see how well that works - it's still a minority government with 213 out of 477 seats, so dependent upon getting votes from the opposition on either the Left or Right on individual issues to get things done. That's pretty much the normal mode of operations in Scandinavia for example, but France has no history of this. In less consensus-oriented systems, switching back and forth between partners tends to piss the latter off eventually.

quote:

New French government announced in shift to the right

12 hours ago

French President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff revealed the new center-right government from the Elysee Palace with some new faces in key positions and some who will be returning to their positions.

Following months of political uncertainty in France, President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff, Alexis Kohler, announced the formation of the new government on Saturday.

It comes more than two months after snap runoff elections produced a hung parliament in which the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition secured the most seats in the June-July elections but failed to win an outright majority.

Key government appointments

The 38-member Cabinet announced on Saturday includes primarily ministers from Macron's centrist alliance and the conservative Republicans party.

Centrist politician Jean-Noel Barrot will become the new foreign minister and is known for his work in digital transformation and also European affairs.

Antoine Armand will serve as finance minister and will be thrust head-on into balancing the books for the upcoming 2025 budget. The 33-year-old has previously served as head of parliament's Economic Affairs Commission.

Returning to his position as defense minister will be Sebastien Lecornu who has been involved in strengthening France's military capabilities as well as playing a key role in managing military aid for Ukraine.

The new minister of the interior was named as conservative politician Bruno Retailleau, who will be tasked with handling domestic issues, including national security, immigration and law enforcement.

France en route towards stricter migration policies

Seventy-three-year-old veteran politician Michel Barnier, was named by Macron as prime minister earlier this month and is probably best known for leading the European Union's Brexit negotiations with the UK.

In an indication of a tough new stance on immigration, Barnier said in his first television interview since taking office that he was going to change the perception that France's borders were "porous as a sieve."

Before the announcement of the new government was even made, protesters took to some streets in Paris and the southern port city of Marseilles over a government they say does not represent the results of the parliamentary poll.

https://www.dw.com/en/new-fren...the-right/a-70291188