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Far-right leader Le Pen tours France ahead of French regional polls

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been touring the country ahead of regional elections this weekend, upbeat about her party's prospects as she tries to steer it further into the mainstream.

Published: 19 June 2021 10:24 CEST
Marine Le Pen campaigns ahead of the French regional elections this weekend
CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP

Her National Rally (RN) party has focused on security, immigration and extremism in its campaign – issues at the centre of the country’s current political debate that have forced candidates across the spectrum to lay out their agenda.

“We’re at the political heart of the country,” Le Pen boasted at a campaign stop in the town of Saint Chamond in southeastern France earlier this month.

The regional vote, which was delayed because of Covid, is being closely watched as the last political test before next year’s presidential election.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Enemies of France should not see Le Pen victories on Sunday as a sign of things to come

As a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic ebbs in France, surveys show that crime and terrorism are among the leading priorities for French people.

Recent events have kept the issues in the headlines: from several fatal attacks on the police this year to the beheading of a teacher in the street in late 2020 by a radical Islamist, which supercharged a longstanding debate about integration and Islam.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron has pushed new legislation to combat violence and extremism, while the centre-right Republicans opposition has also sought to position itself as the true party of law and order.

READ ALSO: What’s at stake in France’s regional elections?

Ahead of the vote, which takes place over two consecutive weekends, Le Pen has made no apologies for focusing her campaigning on national policy issues such as crime and policing.

She has her eyes firmly set on the presidential polls in April and May next year, which surveys currently show could come down to a duel between her and Macron, in a repeat of the 2017 election.

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POLITICS

What’s going on with France’s government now the Olympics are over?

The country appeared to declare a national truce in the political wrangling in order to enjoy the Olympics - but now the Games are over, what happens next in the ongoing saga of the French government?

Published: 13 August 2024 16:33 CEST
What's going on with France's government now the Olympics are over?

For the last three weeks France – and much of the world – has been busy being enthralled by the Paris Olympics. From the beautiful venues to the astonishing sporting feats and the general sense of joie de vivre, it was a very happy period.

But now the Olympics are over (although the Paralympics start in two weeks) and France must again face its lack of a government.

What happened again?

In case a newly-acquired knowledge of the rules of competition skateboarding has caused you to forget, here’s a brief recap of where we were politically when the Games began at the end of July.

A parliamentary election, hastily called by Emmanuel Macron, resulted in an inconclusive result in which no party or group won a majority in the Assemblée nationale in the second round of voting on July 7th.

Instead three blocks emerged – the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) left alliance with 193, centrists including Macron’s party on 164 and the far-right Rassemblement National on 143. No party came even close to the 289 seats required for a majority. 

Things drifted for a while as it became obvious that not only did no party have a majority, but no-one had any immediate prospects of forming an alliance or coalition that would take them to the magic 289 seats.

On July 17th, Macron formally accepted the resignation of prime minister Gabriel Attal and his government, but asked them all to stay on in ‘caretaker’ roles until a new government could be created.

The caretaker government has been in power ever since – it can take decisions in case of emergency or urgent need, but has severely limited powers.

READ ALSO How does France’s caretaker government work?

Then what happened?

The Olympics started. Although no-one actually agreed to a political ‘truce’ the French public and French media seemed very happy to be distracted from this ongoing mess and instead focus on sport.

It helped that the Paris Olympics were a big success – the city looked gorgeous, French athletes won plenty and the whole country was in an unusually good mood.

But the politicians were still working behind the scenes, right?

There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of this. Most of the cabinet immediately decamped to the Games and were pictured cheering on French athletes and generally having fun.

Macron himself appears to have loved the Games – he attended multiple events, embraced French athletes and the closest he appears to have got to politics was attending the France-USA basketball final with the American ‘second gentleman’ Doug Emhoff. 

Meanwhile other ministers decamped to the seaside or the country for their traditional summer holidays.

The politicians of the leftist NFP continued to bang the drum for a new government, especially their eventual pick for prime minister Lucie Castets, who has been touring France introducing herself to the people and generally giving the vibe of a politician on the campaign trail.

So what now?

The Olympics are over and the Paralympics, while likely to be a fantastic sporting spectacle, probably won’t be accepted as an excuse to continue the drift.

On Tuesday, Attal proposed to the various parties of the French parliament that they ‘build a legislative compromise’ with a left-to-right spectrum of parties, but excluding the far-right Rassemblement National and the far-left La France Insoumise.

This is basically what the Macronists were proposing before the Olympics, and it remains to be seen whether they will find enough (or any) parties willing to agree to join, and who could be acceptable to all parties as a candidate for prime minister. Meanwhile the NFP continues to insist that as the largest group it has the right to nominate a prime minister, the aforementioned Castets.

Basically, nothing has changed.

So who’s in charge?

Macron remains president, with the wide-ranging powers afforded to him by the French constitution, but when it comes to government it’s still in caretaker mode, with Attal as a caretaker PM with limited powers.

How will this go on for?

Who can say? The Constitution does not provide any kind of limit for how long a caretaker government can remain in place, nor does Macron have a constitutional deadline by which to name a prime minister.

August is generally a pretty sleepy time in France so it’s possible or even likely that this could drag on until September.

Eventually patience will start to run out, with an increasingly widespread perception that Macron is simply seizing on the complicated situation and constitutional uncertainty in order to expand his own power.

One thing we do know – parliamentary elections are limited to once every 12 months, so there cannot be another one until June 2025.

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