The reconfiguration of French political forces following Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly on Sunday, June 9th, is in full swing. For both the Right and the Left, the challenge is to succeed in building solid coalitions ahead of the early parliamentary elections due to be held at the end of June. On the right, after a day of intense negotiations, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Marion Maréchal and Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête failed to find common ground.
The union of the Right hoped for by a large proportion of the French right-wing electorate, across all parties, is likely to be only partially achieved in the forthcoming legislative elections.
On Tuesday, June 11th, the RN and Les Républicains (LR) reached an agreement on the sharing of constituencies, initiated by Éric Ciotti, president of Les Républicains, who now faces an intense rebellion within his party. Several party officials have attempted to call a meeting to oust him and have barred him from access to the party’s communication platforms on social media.
Also on Tuesday, Marion Maréchal, head of the list for the Reconquête party, held intense negotiations with RN’s Jordan Bardella—under the sceptical gaze of Reconquête president Éric Zemmour, who has been highly critical of any form of collaboration with the RN since the start of the European election campaign. The negotiations failed, after the RN was unwilling to associate itself with Zemmour, particularly given his attitude during the campaign. Reconquête passed the 5% mark in the EU elections and will send five MEPs to Brussels.
The conservative weekly Valeurs Actuelles outlined the timeline of communications between the two French national Right groups. It seems an agreement could have been possible with Marion Maréchal and her team, but Zemmour’s divisive personality made the Rassemblement National decide that an alliance would work to its disadvantage—especially since they have made a more beneficial deal with the centre-right LR party.
The announcement of the failure of the negotiations has left many conservative voters upset, reviving bitter complaints about “the silliest Right in the world”—while the Left, at the same time, is deepening its strategy of unity.
Other political observers emphasised that the RNs strategy made sense, as it aims to get the support from well-established parties—a wise move if it hopes to win on June 30th.
