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French President Emmanuel Macron’s candidate for head of the National Assembly was re-elected to the post on Thursday, suggesting his centrist supporters have a chance of forming a new government despite being defeated in recent elections.
Yaël Braun-Pivet was elected president of the new assembly after three rounds of voting by MPs, as she secured the support of conservative lawmakers and defeated alternative candidates from the left and far right.
Her re-election came even though Macron’s centrist alliance has fewer seats than the left after the snap parliamentary elections he called in June. No group has a majority in the assembly.
“The last few weeks have been very tense,” said Braun-Pivet, who served as president in the previous assembly. “We saw the country split into three, a country fractured.”
Her post is the fourth most important state role in France.
André Chassaigne, the Communist party MP and leftwing alliance candidate for assembly president who lost by 13 votes, said the election had been “stolen by an unnatural partnership” between Macron and the right.
His ally Mathilde Panot of the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) said the result was “a terrible signal for democracy in our country”.
A senior MP in Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) — which had a big lead in the first round of the parliamentary elections but lost ground to a left-right “republican front” in the second — said angrily that everything would again be decided at the Élysée Palace rather than in the assembly.
After the final round of the elections on July 7, President Emmanuel Macron tasked his outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal with staying on in a caretaker capacity.
The choice of the assembly’s president took on particular importance because the post is seen as a possible stepping stone for one parliamentary group and its allies to claim the premiership.
The president oversees parliamentary debates, makes key nominations such as to the constitutional court, and can refer draft laws for review.
Jean Garrigues, a historian specialising in French institutions, said before Braun-Pivet was re-elected: “The choice of the president of the assembly is usually important but this time it is exceptionally important since the person will have to guarantee the fairness of debates and help craft much-needed compromise.”
He said it would also “provide a signal” of who might become prime minister, “perhaps in a technical government if no political one can be formed”.
Garrigues added the fractured parliament meant parties would again have to learn how to compromise and build coalitions.
After coming second in the parliamentary elections, Macron’s centrist Ensemble group has manoeuvred in recent days to prevent the winner, the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance, from claiming the presidency of the assembly.
By winning the most seats, with about 180 MPs, the NFP — made up of LFI, the more moderate Socialists, Communists and Greens, and others — should have been in pole position for someone from its ranks to become prime minister, but infighting has left it unable to agree on a candidate.
Macron, who has the power to appoint the prime minister, has also ignored the NFP’s calls for a premier from among its ranks.
He has instead advocated for a broad “governing pact” stretching from the centre-left to the conservative right, to exclude the LFI and the RN.
Attal has begun talks with other party chiefs to hash out a bare-bones accord around a handful of legislative priorities.
The conservative party previously known as Les Républicains, although only holding about 55 seats with their allies, made a deal with Macron’s camp to secure certain top jobs in exchange for backing Braun-Pivet as assembly president.
Laurent Wauquiez, an MP who heads the conservative group, told Le Figaro newspaper his party was also working on a “legislative pact” to propose to Macron’s camp, including measures to boost take-home pay and cut immigration, but he emphasised that they were unwilling to enter a coalition government.
Clément Beaune, Macron’s former Europe minister, warned on Thursday night that an alliance between Macron and the right would be a “dead end” and that a “broad coalition” was needed to include Socialists, Greens and Communists, as well as moderate conservatives.
