French election gridlock means yet more uncertainty for Europe

BRUSSELS  — For the EU, the French election result was good news — but also bad news. 

“The worst has been avoided,” a senior EU diplomat said, capturing the mood in Brussels on Sunday night when it became clear that the far-right National Rally would not gain a majority in parliament, as many had predicted after the first round of voting a week earlier. Instead the far right finished third, behind the left-wing alliance and Emmanuel Macron’s centrists.

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s failure to grab the reins of the French parliament will have delighted mainstream pro-Europeans.

But that’s where the good news ends as France — alongside Germany, the other big beast in the EU, which has its own internal struggles — has now been plunged into political chaos, with no party winning enough seats for a majority. The paralysis could last months — and damage the EU.

“If soon everything stalls in both Paris and Berlin because of international political disagreements, Europe will really have a problem,” said an EU diplomat who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak freely.

Macron has been a huge presence on the European front, whether by reshaping the EU’s trade agenda, pushing for a more ambitious industrial defense and competitiveness agenda, or eyeing more strategic autonomy ahead of a potential second Donald Trump presidency. 

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s failure to grab the reins of the French parliament will have delighted mainstream pro-Europeans. | Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images

Now, the French president is weakened and distracted by his troubles at home. Whatever government eventually emerges from the fragmented French parliament, it is unlikely to be stable for long.

French politicians will also have the presidential election of 2027 on their minds while making decisions from now on. The teaming up of mainstream and leftist parties to keep the far-right out may not happen again, and the 2027 election could result in a far-right president.

“A new government is likely to focus on domestic issues rather than foreign policy. However, French politics will remain divisive and hard to manage, which will diminish France’s clout on the European and international stage,” said Célia Belin of the Paris office of the European Council of Foreign Relations, a think tank.

Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, took to social media to say that “far from clarifying the political situation, Macron plunged France into confusion, strengthening the extremes.”

“Very worried about the far left & far right anti-EU rhetoric,” he said, adding “we need a strong democratic force @lesRepublicains giving a real alternative to put France back on its feet,” a reference to the center-right Les Républicains, which is a member of the EPP and won just over eight percent of the vote in the French election.

The main concern, according to a senior French official, has to do with money: “We just don’t know how we’re going to pass the finance bill in this political context, despite the risk of the EU triggering an excessive deficit procedure against France.”

German problems

France’s internal gridlock would be easier for the EU to deal with if the other half of the Franco-German engine was running well. But it isn’t.

Following weak European election results for all three parties in the German coalition, which together won just 31 percent of the vote, Chancellor Olaf Scholz managed to secure a deal on a draft budget for 2025, defusing a crisis — at least for the moment — that could have brought down his government.

Scholz may have survived but his internal coalition headaches mean there’s little time for the German chancellor to lead on the European stage — even if he’d shown any interest in doing so. 

A weak Germany and France poses a question about leadership in Europe, said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head of the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. 

“Macron has been constantly pushing for more ambition in Europe, pushing for more coherence and for Europe to become a more important geopolitical and geostrategic player in the world,” he said. “With him fundamentally weakened at home, distracted by the need to form a government, it will be very hard to continue to play that role. He’ll be less of an ambitious player in Europe.”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz managed to secure a deal on a draft budget for 2025, defusing a crisis. | Michele Tantussi/Getty Images

Rahman stressed that both Scholz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk face too many challenges at home to take the lead when it comes to Europe and that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is hoping to get a second term, “is only as strong as her strongest stakeholder,” meaning there is no one left to fill the void. 

Policy infighting

So what does this all mean for the EU’s ambitions in the next five years? 

In France, there is set to be a lot of policy infighting, which will stall economic and fiscal reforms, much to the dismay of the European Commission and the more frugal European countries. 

“The big fear is that a hung parliament will lead to stagnation,” the second EU diplomat said. “This is particularly a problem in view of the French economy and public debt. All the reforms Macron and [Economy and Finance Minister Bruno] Le Maire are trying to do will then come to a standstill. No reforms, national debt rises and total political paralysis.”

European diplomats and officials are now pondering how much impact the French election will have on policy files in the Council of the EU — Europe’s engine room, where ministers from all EU countries haggle over a wide range of topics. 

If the far-right had won, that could have posed problems for the EU’s support to Ukraine or its handling of migration policy, especially if potential far-right French ministers had sided with the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. With a scattered French parliament, it’s unclear which European files Paris will want to push — and how strongly it can act.

For example, Macron has been at the forefront of a plan for a European capital markets union, to get savings and investments flowing across the bloc, as happens with a similar scheme in the U.S.

Emmanuel Macron has been at the forefront of a plan for a European capital markets union, to get savings and investments flowing across the bloc. | Ludovic Marin/Getty Images

That plan, which dates back to 2015, has had trouble getting off the ground, but there is new momentum given the EU’s renewed focus on competitiveness. Will a weakened Paris still be able to lobby for such a key reform?

“This is going to be tricky,” another senior EU diplomat said. “The French agenda will be more to the left, and probably not as clear as it used to be because of the internal discussions. You can think what you want about the French, but their diplomatic machine to push through positions at the European level is very impressive.”

The French system still has a lot of checks and balances to counter the influence of potential radical demands from the National Assembly. There is the Senate (the upper house of parliament), Macron himself, and French administration and diplomacy. 

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala was not concerned that a weak result for Macron would make, for example, the French push to boost EU defense weaker.

“I am a political scientist. The president in the French system is always very strong, the strongest in the whole [of] Europe. We knew from the past [from] the years of cohabitation,” Fiala told POLITICO.

Another European diplomat said “It’s an unprecedented situation, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be clear executive power in the end, especially on European issues,” stressing that whoever ends up in the new government is likely to agree on most European policy files.

The third diplomat stressed the overarching feeling in Brussels was a sense of relief that the far-right didn’t win. “France had the courage to renew its parliament and come out with a pro-European majority, which is a very strong message.”

Elisa Braun and Camille Gijs contributed reporting.