Emmanuel Macron and his Ensemble! have only managed to get a mere 245 seats on the second round of the legislative election that took place in France yesterday, so he no longer has the absolute majority at the Assemblée national (he would need 44 more seats). The second largest group will be the one of the leftist coalition, led by his opponent, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes), which is going to take 137 seats. A big leap forward for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National: the far-right party managed to elect 89 members (it had 8 in the previous parliament, and at any rate there have never been so many at the Palais-Bourbon). Les Républicains (Lr) and the Independent Democratic Union (Udi), with 64 seats, is the fourth strongest group. There will be 215 women (37.26 %) and 362 men (62.74 %), that is, a Parliament with a smaller female quota than that of 2017 (when women accounted for 39%).
The leading article of the Catholic newspaper La Croix speaks of a “broken France” and a “mechanics of majority that has stopped”: eight weeks after confirming Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace, “the vote of the French people deprives him of control over the Assembly: the impressive dynamism of the far right, the tactical success of the reunited left, a longing to quench the omnipotence of the Elysée Palace”, the leading article sums up.