POSSIBLE PRIME MINISTER
Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old RN party president, said he was ready to be prime minister – if his party wins an absolute majority. He has ruled out trying to form a minority government and neither Macron nor the NFP leftist group will form an alliance with him.
“I will be a ‘cohabitation’ prime minister, respectful of the constitution and of the office of president of the republic, but uncompromising about the policies we will implement,” he said.
Fleck said a somewhat more likely scenario is a political gridlock where no party wins an outright majority.
“A coalition government is unlikely in France. It’s not something that France has much experience with, and then you get the so-called cohabitation between the president of one party and a prime minister of another party, or you get a technical government,” said Fleck.
“In all cases, I think you will see serious political gridlock and unpredictability in France. And as I said, this will also have repercussions at the EU level given France’s outsized role and importance as the EU’s second-largest member state and economy.”
The mood was gloomy at the Republique square in Paris, where a few thousand anti-RN protesters gathered at a rally of the leftist alliance on Sunday night.
Najiya Khaldi, a 33-year-old teacher, said she felt “disgust, sadness and fear” at the RN’s strong results.
“I am not used to demonstrating,” she said. “I think I came to reassure myself, to not feel alone.”
Market reaction to Sunday’s result was muted, with the euro gaining around 0.23 per cent in early Asia-Pacific trading. Fiona Cincotta, senior markets analyst at London’s City Index, described relief that the result yielded “no surprises”.
“Le Pen had a slightly smaller margin than some of the polls had pointed to, which may have helped the euro a little bit higher on the open,” she said. “Attention now is on Jul 7 to see whether the second round supports an absolute majority or not. So it does feel like we’re a little bit in limbo.”
