For the first time in the Fifth Republic, the presidential ballot will not see the presence of either a socialist candidate or one of the moderate right, given that Emmanuel Macron (En Marche!) and Marine Le Pen (Front National ).
And barring surprises, Macron himself will be elected on 7 May, and France will thus have the youngest president in its history, who will reach the highest office in the state without ever having held an elected office at national or local level and, above all, without count on an organized political formation.
However, the scenario for the probable next president of the Republic risks becoming complicated right away. One month after the ballot, France will in fact be called to the polls again for the legislative elections (also according to a double-round majority system). And this time, unlike in the past, when the party of the candidate elected to the Elysée usually won the National Assembly as well, it is almost certain that neither of the two representatives who reached the ballot will be able to have its own independent parliamentary majority.
The crossroads of the June legislation
In the unlikely event that Le Pen prevails on Sunday, in June the Front National would have the strength to conquer only a handful of seats, thus remaining very far from the number of 289 necessary to govern (in the meantime, you have already opened up to agreements, signing a government with the sovereign Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a former neo-Gaullist who with his list "Debout la France" in the first round of the presidential elections had collected 4,7%).
Even if Macron wins, the prospects no longer seem convincing. Born a few months ago, "En Marche!", the movement founded by the former Minister of the Economy, has no roots in the ground and for legislative purposes it will only be able to leverage the novelty factor expressed by Macron. However, your candidates run the risk of being perceived as inexperienced, having given no proof of their abilities in the political field, or, in the event that you were to line up some old figures from the Socialist Party or the neo-Gaullist right, as too anchored in the past and well far from the renewal that the new president intends to carry on.
A National Assembly in the hands of the centre-right
It is widely believed that the most probable result is that of a National Assembly with a centre-right majority which at that point would have its own prime minister and government, imposing a new cohabitation between the president and prime minister of different political orientations at the Elysée.
A circumstance that has already occurred three times in the past during the Republic: twice under Mitterrand, when the socialist president – first in the two-year period between 1986 and 1988 and then between 1993 and 1995 – was forced into cohabitation with neo-Gaullist executives, and finally between 1997 and 2002, when Chirac had to cohabit with a government led by the socialist Lionel Jospin.
On a political level, the effects of this scenario would be extremely significant. As soon as he is elected, the new president would find himself facing for his entire mandate a National Assembly representing a majority opposed to the presidential one and a government which, consequently, would be totally released from the control of the Elysée and which would conduct economic and the management of public order, leaving the Head of State only a predominant role in the management of foreign and defense policy.
Conflict or collaboration?
As has been repeatedly underlined, the system of the Fifth Republic works if the government is the expression of the presidential majority itself, thus fully fulfilling its role as executor of the guidelines drawn up by the Elysée. In the hypothesis of cohabitation, on the other hand, the president would be limited to exercising a leading role only in the military field (a sector considered as a presidential "reserved domain") and internationally, but would no longer have a say in the management of national politics .
In fact, in the event that the center-right obtains an affirmation in the legislative process by winning an autonomous parliamentary majority, this would impose a program on the Elysée that is very distant from the presidential one, given the substantial differences that emerged between the two sides during the recent electoral campaign.
And it is here that another element comes into play, namely the aspect that the possible cohabitation between the president and the prime minister would assume. In fact, as previous experiences have shown, this could take on a conflictual aspect (with the president who would try to impose his prerogatives on the government, also remembering that it always remains his power to proceed with the early dissolution of the National Assembly), or collaborative, in the event instead the two heads of the executive negotiated a compromise to define their respective functions.
Electoral desistence and risk of weakness
But even if a clear majority does not emerge from the legislative decrees, Macron's task would still be complicated. Barring any collaboration with the radical left (so much so that Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself did not want to give clear voting indications for the runoff), the new president would only have the possibility of dialogue with the socialists and the moderate right.
But relations with the PS have never been easy and, even if several members of the Hollande government - starting with former premier Manuel Valls and defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian - have already allied themselves with Macron, many in the party look against this perspective; not to mention that the disastrous result of the presidential elections could leave the socialists with just a few dozen parliamentarians.
The most advantageous solution for both parties would be to negotiate an electoral desistance agreement before the vote, without which, according to reliable estimates, both the PS and "En Marche!" they would be able to elect just about forty deputies; but it is a solution that is difficult to implement on a political level. Thus only cooperation with the right-wing Républicains would remain.
And if for some this scenario would represent a balance between a young but at the same time inexperienced president and a government in any case the expression of moderate and pro-European forces capable of moving forward without too many jolts, for the more critical a similar scenario would instead refer to what happened during the Fourth Republic, where the Heads of State were weak and the Parliament fragmented and divided.
From the Affariinternazionali.it website
