French leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Photo by Thomas Bresson, used under Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0
Many French people were very anxious prior to the second round of their July, 2024 legislative elections. Unlike the American two-party system, in the French multiparty system a candidate needs 50 percent or more of the vote to be seated in the first round. If no candidate gets that, there is a second, runoff round in which the candidate with the majority is seated in the National Assembly (the lower but more powerful legislative house than the Senate).
Elections for the European Parliament (EP) were held in June of this year, shortly before the July elections for the French National Assembly. The candidates presented by the French far-right party in that election did exceedingly well, as did far rightists from other European countries. This French party was formerly called the National Front. Many of the founders were fascists who had supported the Vichy government installed by the Nazis during World War II. It was led for many years after the war by a racist and Holocaust-minimizing man named Jean-Marie Le Pen. Realizing that his fascism and racism were putting off the French electorate in the present era, his daughter, Marine Le Pen, expelled her father from the leadership of the party, and then from the party itself. She took it over and tried to give it a more acceptable image. But it is strongly anti-immigrant and has continued to harbor people of her father’s ilk within it.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally. Photo by Vox España, used under Creative Commons License CC0 1.0
Because this far-right party, now called the National Rally (Rassemblement National – RN), did so well in the EP elections, most French people and foreign observers thought RN would do well in the national legislative elections. The opinion polls told them that too. Then, it was assumed by many, Marine Le Pen would run, and probably win, in the 2027 presidential elections as well, giving the French a unified far-right government. After all, several European countries have made a complete right turn recently.
But surprise, surprise, it did not happen that way. While there were several other very small parties, there were three major electoral groupings: the far-right RN; the more moderately conservative followers of President Emmanuel Macron and his center-right allies in MoDem (Democratic Movement) and Horizons; and the left-wing New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire – NFP). RN won 142 seats, the NFP 180, and President Macron’s and allied groups 168. Within the NFP, which more than doubled its representation from the 2022 elections, were the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Ecologists, and France Unbowed (La France Insoumise).
While no party got a majority, which would require 289 seats, the NFP coalition, with its surprise showing, played a major role in blocking the RN from getting a legislative majority.
The most public face within the NFP coalition is the leader of France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who promotes participatory democracy and calls, among other things, for the abolition of the French Senate and presidency, which would be fundamental changes in the French Constitution. He has held office in the National Assembly and in the EP as a Socialist. Mélenchon had been, and perhaps still is, a member of one of the three major Trotskyist groups in France, the Lambertists, named after its former leader, Pierre Lambert. These Trotskyists have sometimes entered the Socialist Party in order to exert influence or control within it. France Unbowed’s success in the 2024 elections surprised almost everyone in France. Mélanchon is forceful in advocating his positions, and has alienated more moderate Left politicians and their followers, not to mention centrists.
Mélenchon also has been accused of antisemitism by people across the political spectrum. He very clearly supports the cause of the Palestinians. He has written that “antisemitism remains residual” in France. And he accused the former European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, who is Jewish, of “not thinking in French but in international finance.” This last remark could be taken more as a critique of multinational capitalism and Moscovici’s attitude toward it than as an antisemitic slur. Whether a cynical political tool of his adversaries or reality, such remarks feed suspicion that Mélanchon harbors sentiments that one would expect more on the far right.
In any case, this portrayal of Mélenchon has entailed political costs to France Unbowed despite its surprising electoral showing. Due to external opposition and lack of cohesion within NFP, especially between France Unbowed and the Socialists, it was unable to play a role in displacing the more conservative Macronist sitting president of the National Assembly from her position. These strains within NFP meant a longer than usual process for it to exercise the constitutional power of the plurality in the Assembly to name a new prime minister. But it did not matter anyway, because President Macron exercised his power to veto their choice.
President Emmanuel Macron. Photo by Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU 2024, used under Creative Commons License CC BY 2.0 DEED
This peculiar allocation of powers means that France can have, and has had, a split executive: a president of one party and a prime minister of another. It is called cohabitation (living together). But Macron avoided this. After two months of deadlock and facing a budget deadline, he appointed Michel Barnier, a member of the center-right Republican Party. He knew that Barnier would agree with much of his own economic policy, and hoped that Marine le Pen’s far-right party, which is the largest single party (as distinguished from voting blocs) in the Assembly, would find Barnier acceptable. Mélanchon, as leader of the leftist NFP, called this appointment undemocratic, and urged people to protest in the streets.
The next big election in France is going to be for the president of the Republic in 2027. That is the biggest prize in French politics. Marine Le Pen of RN has her eye on it. Will the Rally be blocked from that as it was from the presidency of the National Assembly this year? Or will France go far-right as several other European countries have? The stakes are high, not only for France, but internationally.
Many thanks to fellow political scientist Marie-Claude Smouts for her comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Belden Fields is the author of the book Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States. He also for many years supervised an internship program for U of I students in the French National Assembly.
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