French President Emmanuel Macron is facing the prospect of domestic powerlessness if the National Assembly elections do not go his way.
Voters are set to go to the polls on June 30 and July 7 and as it stands Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is topping the polls with 33 percent, while the New Popular Front – a coalition of Left and far-Left forces – trails on 30 percent, according to Politico.
Meanwhile, the President’s Renaissance party is languishing in third at 19 percent. This raises the spectre of a party on the radical Right or Left winning a majority and forcing Macron to appoint a member of their party as France’s new prime minister.
Under the French constitution, the President is invested with the power to appoint the country’s PM. In theory, they can appoint whoever they want, however, the National Assembly has the power to shut down the Government, so in reality, the new prime minister needs to be one the majority of members of the Assembly approve of. Therefore, the President is forced to appoint a PM from the majority party.
As it stands, it looks likely that the PM could be 28-year-old Jordan Bardella from National Rally or a candidate on the Left. Either way, if it isn’t a member of Renaissance then French politics will enter a period of “cohabitation”, meaning the president and prime minister are from different parties.
In this scenario, the huge power imbalance between the prime minister and president becomes clear. Although the president is the official head of state, it is the prime minister who wields real power. Cohabitation has occurred on three previous occasions, most recently between 1997 and 2002 when conservative Jacques Chirac was president and socialist Lionel Jospin was prime minister.
Under the French constitution: “The prime minister directs the action of the government, ensures the execution of laws and is responsible for national defense.
“The government determines and conducts the policy of the nation, it has at its disposal the administration and the armed force.”
According to Dominique Rousseau, a professor at the Université Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, who spoke to Le Monde: “In the event of a cohabitation, power clearly lies in the relationship between the prime minister and the Assemblée Nationale.”
The only area Macron would retain some semblance of control over would be foreign affairs and defence. However, even in that arena, the constitution is ambiguous in where real power resides.
According to the constitution, the prime minister “has the administration and the armed forces at its disposal” and “the prime minister is responsible for national defense,” according to articles 20 and 21.
However, the president is the “guarantor of national independence and the integrity of national territory”, “the head of the armed forces” and says that he “presides over the councils and higher committees of national defense”.
The president also holds the nuclear codes and he alone decides on the use of this force.