There's a specter haunting France and it has a funny name: Nudes. It means "New ecological and social popular union" and it is the electoral cartel that he founded Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing radical, who finished third in the presidential competition, who now wants to become prime minister, winning the legislative elections in France scheduled for Sunday 12 June. It is made up of communists, socialists, ecologists and Mélenchon's own movement, La France insoumise.
Now that Marine Le Pen's right has been cornered, Nupes is the only danger for Emmanuel Macron because it can deprive him of the absolute majority of deputies in the National Assembly, the French Parliament. A lot of trouble for the newly reconfirmed president.
In fact, polls on the elections in France foresee a head-to-head between the troops of Mélenchon, Nupes, and the coalition of Macron, Ensemble, in the French legislative elections which take place on Sunday 12 June 2022 for the first round and on the 19th for the second.
Legislative elections France June 12, 2022: Macron between the absolute majority and cohabitation
What could happen if Macron only had one relative majority? Will we see a fourth “cohabitation” in France? Or would the president choose to agree from time to time with other parliamentary groups to implement his program?
Macron is actually convinced that he will succeed again in the enterprise, that is, to govern even in this five-year period comforted by a majority of allied parties. In 2017 he obtained it easily: 350 deputies out of the total 577 of the Assembly. He needs less, 289, to be on the safe side. And the first results that come from some sections from abroad, they prove him right: Ensemble won 8 out of 11.
If his trust is well placed, it will be understood only at the end of the first round. The teams, parties or coalitions, who presented themselves on the field this time are 7, 6.293 candidates, among them fifteen ministers who, if they were not elected deputies, would have to resign, according to practice.
And the other spectrum, that of "cohabitation"? One wonders whether "cohabitation" is realistic in this context.
In a semi-presidential system like France, there's nothing wrong with imagining it. But even for someone like Macron, attentive to and permeable to any change, it would be difficult to implement a common policy with a political force that not only thinks exactly the opposite, but questions the founding values of the Fifth Republic, starting with full powers constitutional of the president.
François Mitterrand underwent "cohabitation" twice, with the neo-Gaullists Jacques Chirac (1986/88) and Edouard Balladur (1993/95). The third time it was Chirac's turn to "cohabit" with the socialist Lionel Jospin (1997/2002). But those "cohabitations" did not produce traumas because those political forces, albeit from opposite sides, fully shared the system on which the Fifth Republic was based.
Il radical Mélenchon he doesn't seem like that type of politician, the "cohabitation" between him and Macron is really hard to imagine.
Legislative elections France 2022: the programs of Macron and Mélenchon
As for the program, the two are very far apart, both in foreign policy than in the internal and social one. Anti-Americanism since the 60s, France out of NATO, ambiguity about Putin's War: this is the Mélenchon line. Exactly the opposite is the president, a banker who grew up among the businessmen of the States, loyal to the military structures of the Allies, no ambiguity as to who triggered the conflict in Ukraine.
Not to mention, in internal politics, the difference of opinion between the two on everything: from the retirement age to the rest of the baggage of social measures that Macron (and others) deems impossible to financially support.
Mélenchon has livened up the electoral campaign by presenting himself, as mentioned at the outset, as the next prime minister. Indeed he has always declared since the closing of the presidential polls that the legislative ones would have been the third round of those elections.
Macron was lapidary on the subject. Replying on the matter to the newspaper Le Parisien he said: “There is a Constitution. No political party can impose a name on the president."
Which can only confirm the hypothesis of an impossibility of "cohabitation" in case of victory of Nupes.
The risk of abstention
At the moment, however, the legislatives, beyond the results they may produce, do not excite the French: according to the latest polls, only 38% of them said they were interested in the elections; and less than half said they were going to vote. It's nothing new. Also in 2017 the abstention was very strong: 48,7% of voters had voted in the first round, this time it would reach 46%, according to the survey conducted by Ipsos for Le Monde.
In this regard, Macron was asked, in the same interview in which he was asked to comment on Mélenchon as prime minister, if he did not feel somewhat responsible for the fact that the French did not go to vote.
“It is a problem that concerns all democracies – replied the president – I see the paradox in our societies where the will to express oneself is very strong, but at the same time there is the disaffection for the elections".
What does it intend to do to remedy this contradiction? Macron has no doubts: “We need to restore vitality to our democratic debate. That's why I want to open the question of proportionality. I will do it in the autumn to reach conclusions at the end of 2023 ”. The same debate that occasionally peeps between the political forces in Italy. Timidly, waiting for more determination. And who knows if it will end by 2023.
