Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet was re-elected this Thursday as president of the French National Assembly after a secret vote marked by suspense that was decided in her favor thanks to the votes of the right-wing deputies. The candidate of the Ensemble pour la République party (the party of the French president) beat the deputy of the New Popular Front, the communist André Chassaigne, in the third vote (220 votes against 207).
After the 2022 legislative elections, Braun-Pivet resigned from her position in the Government – she was then Minister of Overseas Territories – to be the candidate of the presidential party of the Assembly, but against the advice of Macron himself, who preferred other deputies from his party. But at that time, Braun-Pivet won and was elected in the second round with 242 votes. Throughout the last legislature, her activity as president was marked by several disagreements with deputies from the left-wing France Insoumise party who criticized her management of the chamber, in particular for the number of sanctions imposed against them (including some for having displayed Palestinian flags). ).
The first woman to hold this position, she had clearly shown, upon her re-election as a deputy on the evening of the July 7 vote, her intention to run in the elections, despite the loss of her party’s parliamentary majority. “During these two years, I fought day and night so that the National Assembly was not blocked, so that each of the deputies was respected,” Braun-Pivet had defended a few days before the vote, referring to the situation of relative majority in which the presidential coalition has found itself for two years, with 250 elected deputies, 82 more than in the current one.
“The last few weeks have been extremely tense and we have seen a country that is worried and fractured. Today, we have an enormous responsibility,” Braun-Pivet said in his first speech on camera after his re-election. The president recalled that there were “important issues at stake” in this legislature, that “our decisions and actions can change lives, as the voters told us. We must listen to these messages and find solutions with new methods.” Braun-Pivet added that “this assembly is more representative of the French people, but it is also more divided,” explaining the need to find a “compromise.”
From the first round, Braun-Pivet benefited from the support of the presidential party (formerly called Renaissance, recently renamed Ensemble pour la République) and its allies within the centrist party MoDem. The other centre-right party, that of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe (Horizons), decided to present an alternative candidacy with MP Naïma Moutchou. The MP from the Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires (LIOT) group, Charles de Courson, the longest-serving parliamentarian in the Assembly, was also a candidate.
In the previous days, the presidents of the groups and the deputies multiplied the conversations and agreements in the corridors of the Borbón Palace, to negotiate possible support and possible withdrawals of candidates, especially after the first vote. In recent days, the deputies of the Gaullist right (today under the name of Droite Républicaine) have designated Philippe Juvin as their candidate for the presidency. Juvin was re-elected in his constituency after the withdrawal of the presidential candidate in the second round and is one of the party figures most in favor of agreements with the center. His withdrawal and his party’s votes for Braun-Pivet were decisive.
The Conservative MPs’ favorable vote for the Macronist candidate comes at a time when the French media are publishing that the new leader of the Gaullist party, Laurent Wauquiez, is preparing a document that will serve as a legislative pact for a possible alliance with Emmanuel Macron and the formation of a government – a minority – bringing together conservatives and centrists.
Isolation of the left
Upon learning of the results of the last legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron declared that he would wait for “the structuring of the Assembly” before making any decision on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. This statement made the election of the presidency of the Chamber an important indicator, particularly in relation to the New Popular Front, which continues to claim the legitimacy to form a government because it is the coalition with the most seats.
For left-wing MPs, the election of the candidate for the presidency of the Assembly offered a respite from the growing tensions surrounding the nomination of a candidate for the post of Prime Minister representing all left-wing parties. The parties of the New Popular Front (France Insoumise, Socialist Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts and Communist Party) agreed on the nomination of the communist MP for Puy-de-Dôme, André Chassaigne.
Chassaigne is the president of the Democratic and Republican Left Group (RDA), which brings together progressive representatives from the French overseas territories, in addition to the communists. He is a well-known figure in the National Assembly, where he has sat for 22 years, and it was hoped that his personality and experience would allow him to attract votes beyond his own ranks.
At the end of the session, the MP denounced that “the French vote had been stolen by an unnatural alliance”, in reference to a possible agreement between conservatives and Macronists in exchange for the decisive votes. The communist politician said that the NFP felt “proud to have fought this battle together, to have agreed on the name of a single candidate”. “We defended our program,” he added.
In fact, the NFP candidate came out on top in the first round, ahead of the far-right candidate and Braun-Pivet, who came in third. But the withdrawals of the right-wing candidates and the Horizontes representative already indicated that Braun-Pivet would come out on top in the second round and placed her as the favourite for a hypothetical third vote.
The far right, in search of alliances
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party has put forward its own candidate, Sébastien Chenu, who was vice-president during the last term. Aware that it did not have enough votes to be elected, the far-right party hoped to negotiate the withdrawal of its candidate or the vote of its deputies, according to French media.
In exchange, they hoped to reach agreements with other groups on the distribution of other key positions in the Assembly. The condition set by Le Pen’s party is that candidates must “support institutions and plurality”. A way of criticizing the attempts to establish a cordon sanitaire defended by the left-wing parties, which had defended pacts with the Macronist coalition that could leave the National Group deputies out of the committees. But finally – and against all expectations – Chenu maintained his candidacy in the third round.
The party with the most MPs, Le Pen’s party is claiming two vice-presidencies, one of the three quaestors (responsible for managing financial and administrative services) and a secretariat. The National Group is also claiming the presidency of the Finance Committee, which is to be awarded on Saturday 20 July and which, according to the Assembly’s rules, must go to the opposition. The problem is that, in the current situation, without a government or a clear majority, no one can yet say who the opposition is.
Criticism of the government
The person who holds the presidency of the National Assembly is considered the fourth most important figure in the State, in addition to setting the political tone in the Lower House. He organizes parliamentary work, directs deliberations, maintains order in the session and can suspend it, among other prerogatives. You can also go to the Constitutional Council to decide whether or not the laws approved are in accordance with the Magna Carta.
Even though the election is not directly linked to the appointment of the next Prime Minister, the agreement between Macronist and conservative deputies adds even more uncertainty about a possible pact that complicates the left’s attempts to gain power. However, experts have stressed that this election is above all an agreement on the functioning of the chamber and that it is not necessarily transposable to a government agreement or a majority in favor of a political project.
With an unprecedented configuration in the National Assembly – in the absence of clear majorities – the election of a new president is a particularly important moment in the legislative process and serves as a barometer of the balance of power between the different blocs. The other key positions in the Assembly Council will be filled between Friday and Saturday.
This context makes the vote the subject of particular attention, at a crucial moment, of great uncertainty about the color of the next government and the composition of the current executive chaired by Gabriel Attal. The fact that Attal and several members of the government participated in the vote was criticized by the rest of the political groups, who consider that it goes against the distribution of powers.
This Thursday brought some striking images. As tradition dictates, the youngest member of the Assembly – in this case Flavien Termet – 22 years old, elected by the extreme right – was the first to vote and waited near the ballot boxes to shake hands with the rest of the members. Many NFP parliamentarians (all those from France Insoumise) refused to do so.
On the other hand, the Green MP Sébastien Peytavie, the first French MP in a wheelchair, regretted in a tweet not having been able to vote directly in the first two rounds and “having had to entrust his vote to a bailiff” because the chamber is not adapted. Finally, he was able to place his ballot in the ballot box during the third vote, to the applause of all the MPs present in the chamber. Since his election during the previous legislature, Peytavie has sat in the front row, next to the traditional ministers’ bench, instead of being on the bench with his group comrades.
