Legislative elections 2024: the “death certificate” of macronism in France?
Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly the day after a very disappointing score for the list of the presidential majority in the European elections June 9 took an immense majority of French people by surprise. And this bet, with immense stakes, turned out to be a loser, underlines part of the foreign press.
According to initial estimates, Together obtains 20.3% of the votes after this first round and comes in third position behind the National Rally (RN, 34%) and the New Popular Front (NFP, 28%).
“The vote was a crushing humiliation for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance,” writing the british weekly The Economist. “His centrist movement, once dominant, suffered a severe defeat,” coward The New York Times.
The vote was marked by a significant turnout, estimated between 65.5% and 69.7%. This is the highest since at least 1997, when an early vote was called by the then President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac.
Political isolation
As soon as the results were announced, Emmanuel Macron called, in a press release, for a “large gathering, clearly Democratic and Republican” against the RN. The head of state sees in this high participation the will of the French to “clarify the political situation”.
In her first speech on Sunday evening, Marine Le Pen, re-elected in the 11e constituency of Pas-de-Calais, was delighted to have succeeded in “erase the Macronist bloc”. “A massive vote has foiled the trap that was set for the country. It inflicts a heavy defeat on the so-called presidential majority,” declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his part. “Macronism may have signed its death certificate this evening,” observed the Madrid daily El País.
“Many politicians who supported him for years now risk losing their seatpolitically isolating Emmanuel Macron”, analysis The Washington Post. First of all, Gabriel Attal, who will have to leave the Hôtel de Matignon.
Foreign newspapers, very mobilized to follow the election, are drawing the first clues to explain the defeat of Macronism which is, in all likelihood, losing its capacity to govern.
For some, the strategy of the presidential camp of to put the left of the NFP and the extreme right back to back did not bear fruit. “The polarization that benefited Macron so much at the beginning has led France to an unsustainable situation,” writes the Catalan daily The Vanguardia.
A foil figure
Others point to the presidential party’s disconnection from the French. “Despite all his accomplishments, including reducing unemployment, Emmanuel Macron has lost touch with the people the National Rally mobilized,” comments The New York Times. In another article, La Vanguardia compared macronism to these “hydroponic plants that live without roots”, to evoke the lack of local implantation of macronism.
More broadly, the international press agrees that the almost visceral unpopularity to which the tenant of the Élysée is subjected is one of the causes of this electoral rout. “In many ways, Sunday’s vote was a referendum on Mr. Macron, who founded a movement in his own image and upended French politics by becoming the first president in the contemporary era elected outside the center-left and center-right parties that have dominated French politics for decades,” comment The Washington Post.
From Barcelona, The Vanguardia summarizes, scathingly: the president is “went from the status of irresistible seducer to that of the most hated man in French political life”.
