France’s president called a surprise election. The result could diminish his power in world affairs

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PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron — if he sleeps at all — may wake up with his wings clipped Monday morning.

The second round of legislative elections on Sunday is certain to affect the French leader’s influence in defense and foreign affairs. It could diminish his role as an active and influential figure in European and global affairs and as a key supporter of Ukraine in the war against Russia, say retired French military officers and analysts of French defense and foreign policy.

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After the president’s centrist bloc came a distant third, behind the rising far right, in the first round of voting to choose a new parliament last weekend, one of the only certainties ahead of Sunday’s decisive second round is that Macron himself cannot emerge stronger.

With several of his candidates already out of the race, Macron’s camp cannot secure the absolute majority that gave him so much room to maneuver in his first term as president in 2017. It is also likely to fall short of the 245 seats it won after his re-election in 2022. That made it the single largest group — though not with a clear majority — in the outgoing National Assembly, which Macron dissolved on June 9, triggering a snap election after the far-right dealt his coalition a painful blow in the French vote for the European Parliament.

That leaves two outcomes that are likely to emerge between Sunday night and Monday as official results emerge.

In one scenario, France could end up with a fragmented parliament and a prime minister too weak to seriously undermine Macron’s constitutionally guaranteed role as head of the armed forces and, more broadly, unable or unwilling to challenge his powers over defense and foreign policy. Yet even in this best-case scenario for Macron, France risks turning inward, focusing more on its polarized and unstable domestic politics than on its military standing and activities in the world.

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In the second scenario, the worst for Macron, the far right could score a historic victory on Sunday that would put the president at the disposal of Jordan Bardella as prime minister, in an awkward and potentially conflicting power-sharing arrangement. Bardella, 28, is a follower of Marine Le Pen, who leads the far-right National Rally party, with Bardella as its president. Both Le Pen and Bardella have made it clear that, in power, they would seek to rein in Macron and impose themselves on decision-making in the areas of defense, European affairs and foreign affairs.

The French constitution offers only limited answers to how the various scenarios might play out. French analysts say it could depend largely on the personalities of the participants and their ability to make concessions.

“Bardella’s Red Lines”

Although the constitution states that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, it also states that the prime minister is “responsible for national defense.”

During the campaign, Bardella laid out what he said would be his “red lines” on Ukraine if he ended up sharing power with Macron: no more French deliveries of long-range weapons that Ukraine could use to hit targets in Russia and no deployment of troops, a scenario Macron has floated this year. Bardella said he did not want a nuclear-armed France to be drawn into a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia. His party has historically been close to Russia, and Le Pen has cultivated ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin for years and supported Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

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“Who will have the final say in potential discussions about long-range weapons for Kiev is actually a very difficult question,” says François Heisbourg, a French analyst specializing in defense and security issues at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“The president may be able to do that if he wants to, but the prime minister may also say he can prevent the president from doing that. That could lead to a dead end,” he says.

“If they don’t agree, they might stop each other from doing anything.”

Power-sharing is nothing new in France. But in previous instances, the president and prime minister have not been as politically opposed as Macron and Bardella.

“No one has yet tried to test these different forces to their final conclusion,” Heisbourg says. “This is completely uncharted territory.”

Le Pen and Macron exchange blows

On military matters, Le Pen has already sounded a warning, describing Macron’s role as commander-in-chief as “an honorary title for the president because it is the prime minister who holds the strings of the purse.” Macron responded: “What arrogance!”

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Retired French Vice Admiral Michel Olhagarai, former head of France’s Centre for Advanced Military Studies, has expressed concern that what he called constitutional “ambiguity” over shared military responsibilities could extend to the country’s armed forces.

He says that sharing power in conflict can be “very painful for armies, to know who to hand over to. It is very painful and very difficult.”

“In any case, the President of the Republic can no longer take personal initiatives, such as launching a (military) operation and so on, because that requires an understanding with the Prime Minister.”

And since the French military operates around the world, with forces deployed on NATO’s eastern flank, in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, any changes in its position by the power-sharing government are sure to be scrutinized by France’s international network of allies and partners.

“Everyone will ask, ‘But what is happening? How will this develop? What will happen to France? Will France fulfill its commitments?’” says Olhagarai.

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But analysts say France’s nuclear forces should not be affected. The president keeps the nuclear codes, not least to ensure the arsenal remains credible as a deterrent by making sure potential enemies understand that any decision to strike is not made by committee.

France looks inward

If no single bloc emerges from Sunday’s vote with a clear majority, lawmakers may have to do something unusual in France: form a coalition government. Because the prime minister who heads the government would need broad parliamentary consensus to keep the government from falling, that person is likely to be a weak junior partner in sharing power with Macron.

“The president will have much more control,” says retired General Dominique Trinquand, former head of the French military mission to the United Nations.

Under a coalition government, building consensus on difficult foreign policy issues—such as whether to significantly boost aid to Ukraine—may take a long time, and divisive issues may be pushed to the background.

“The room for manoeuvre will narrow,” says Frederic Charion, a professor of political science at Paris City University.

“In France, we are more accustomed to this kind of presidential system of monarchical foreign policy, when the president says: I will do this, I will do that.”

But in a power-sharing arrangement with a new prime minister now in waiting for Macron, “things cannot go on like this.”

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