French legislatures | Towards harsh cohabitation in the event of victory for the far right

(Paris) Three days before the first round of historic legislative elections, Marine Le Pen has increased tension over possible cohabitation by reducing the function of head of the armed forces of the President of the Republic to a simple “honorary title”, comments implicitly assumed by Jordan Bardella, but strongly denounced by Gabriel Attal and the New Popular Front.

In the event of great success for the far-right party, Marine Le Pen outlined, in an interview with Télégramme, a rough cohabitation: “Chief of the armed forces, for the president, it is an honorary title since he is the prime minister who holds the purse strings.” Consequence, according to her: “on Ukraine, the president will not be able to send troops”, while Emmanuel Macron refused to exclude this option.

The probable presidential candidate of 2027 certainly seemed to qualify this statement a few hours later on X, evoking “the reserved domain of the President of the Republic”. But she maintained that the head of government has “through budgetary control the means to oppose” the sending of troops abroad.

“It is the Prime Minister who decides the operating budget of the armies,” insisted Jordan Bardella during a final televised debate with the socialist Olivier Faure, who represented the New Popular Front, and Gabriel Attal.

These statements made the latter jump. In the event of a victory by the RN and cohabitation, “there would be a form of dispute between the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic to know who has the role of head of the armed forces,” he warned. “It is a message sent to the world powers, to the whole world, which is a very serious message for the security of the French.”

During the three previous cohabitations of the V^e Republic, the president had retained broad powers in matters of international policy and defense, by virtue of the “reserved domain”.

But this time, warns Olivier Faure, the far-right party wants to “take everything.”

In a statement to AFP, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said he was convinced that “the next government will continue to fully support Ukraine” and “whatever the political situation”.

Two million proxies

A new cohabitation, with Jordan Bardella at Matignon, requires obtaining an absolute majority for the RN in seats in the Assembly at the end of the second round on July 7.

For the moment, the far right is largely in the lead in the first round on Sunday, with 36% of voting intentions, according to an Ipsos-Jean-Jaurès-Cevipof Foundation-Institut Montaigne survey for Le Monde covering nearly 12,000 people. people.

According to this vast study, which does not provide projections in terms of seats, the left would gather 29% of the votes, the Macronist camp 19.5% and LR 8%.

The “weight” of the RN “is so high that it can not only envisage a relative majority, but we cannot exclude, far from it, an absolute majority”, underlines the pollster Brice Teinturier (Ipsos).

But the 577 elections, in each constituency, contain many unknowns, the equations being also expected to be profoundly disrupted between the two rounds depending on the retentions, withdrawals or even voting instructions.

A mere relative majority would open the prospect of a possible institutional blockage, reinforced by Jordan Bardella’s refusal to form a government if he does not have an absolute majority.

Interest in these early legislative elections continues: two thirds of voters plan to vote on Sunday, according to Ifop-Fiducial, which would correspond to the best participation rate in this type of election since 1997.

Proof of this enthusiasm, the two million proxy mark was crossed on Wednesday evening and more than 410,000 French people abroad took part in the online vote, which closed this Thursday at noon (compared to 250,000 in 2022), a record.

Lively exchanges

The exchanges were often lively during the last televised debate.

Gabriel Attal accused his far-right rival of having presented “a hundred candidates” in the legislative elections who had made “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks”, which the RN leader rejected en masse.

The Prime Minister also denounced the RN’s desire to “stigmatize 3.5 million dual-national French people” by prohibiting them from accessing certain jobs deemed “strategic.”

“Caricature,” replied Mr. Bardella, believing that his opponent “has an interest in playing on fears” and assuring that he did not wish “to call into question dual nationality.”

Asked who could access Matignon in the event of victory, Olivier Faure assured that it would take “a quiet force, a force that knows where it is going”. “I will therefore be the prime minister of all the French to initiate the recovery of the country”, Jordan Bardella immediately retorted.

In the meantime, demonstrations to block the National Rally took place again in several large cities in France, bringing together several thousand people, according to an AFP count.