President Emmanuel Macron has avoided his nightmare scenario of the far right coming to power in France but still faces an unprecedented challenge steering his country and the remainder of his presidency through an uncertain future. Macron’s centrist forces performed more strongly than expected in the legislative elections, projected to come in second behind the resurgent left, with the far right that won the first round on June 30 in only third place. Yet as he prepares to fly to the United States for a NATO summit in Washington, he now faces a number of headaches including a left that now believes it has a mandate to govern, his own unpopularity, and open dissent among some of his most influential allies.
There is still palpable anger among Macron’s allies over his decision to call snap legislative elections three years ahead of time after his party was trounced in EU Parliament elections last month. The president argued that a “clarification” was needed in French politics. “The decision to dissolve the National Assembly, which was supposed to be a moment of clarification, has instead led to uncertainty,” his former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Sunday in an unusually sharp barb.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who said he would offer his resignation Monday but was also prepared to stay on, said in an extraordinary show of dissent after the election that he “did not choose this dissolution”. – ‘The question now’ – The government’s strategy of .
