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00:00help us to understand exactly what's going on then. I'm joined here on set by
00:03International Affairs editor Philip Tell. Philip just explain to us first of all
00:07how important this role of Prime Minister is and why all these parties
00:10are arguing and discussing it. Right well let's try and see head to tail in this
00:15shall we Stuart, it's all a bit complicated. Basically let's look at the opinion polls
00:20to start with. The National Rally is in the lead ahead of these legislative
00:25elections coming up later this month. They're on 34%. The Popular Front, the
00:30left-wing Alliance is on 28% and Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance group is
00:34on 18%. So for the moment it looks like the National Rally is going to come out
00:38on top. We don't know whether or not, which is what Clovis was just talking
00:42about, the National Rally is going to obtain an absolute majority. What is an
00:47absolute majority? That means getting over half the number of seats in the
00:51National Assembly. There are 577 seats in all. For that majority you need to
00:57win 289. If you win less than that but you still have more seats than any other
01:02party you still have a majority but a relative majority which means to pass
01:07legislation through you need to push through a coalition agreement, get a vote
01:13from the opposition. Sometimes that's very complicated and that's what Emmanuel
01:16Macron has been faced with since 2022. So Jordan Bardella says well I'm not
01:21going to accept the job if I don't get an absolute majority because if I don't
01:25then I'm not going to be able to push through any of the policies that I want
01:28to push through and it's going to be very difficult for me. But as you rightly
01:30said it's very difficult to envisage the fact that if they do come top with
01:35the National Rally that Jordan Bardella won't accept the post of Prime Minister.
01:39Now on the other side you have the four parties which have come together to
01:44create the Popular Front. That's the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists and
01:49the France Unbowed, the far-left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. If we look at the
01:54election result from 2022 in France you can see that back then it was a very
02:01close call between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Emmanuel Macron came
02:06first on 27.8% but Marine Le Pen on 23%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon on 21%. So Jean-Luc
02:12Mélenchon from the far-left has his eyes also on becoming Prime Minister. The
02:16problem with him is that he's a very divisive figure in France. People either
02:20love or loathe him. He's deemed as being anti-semitic. He's also refused to
02:25condemn Hamas for being a terrorist organisation and it's pretty uncertain
02:30that Emmanuel Macron want him as Prime Minister because the two just won't get
02:34on with each other. So what the left is saying is well we know that Jean-Luc
02:38Mélenchon is unpopular but we'll have a vote on whether or not he should be
02:44Prime Minister and who we think should be Prime Minister amongst the left-wing
02:47candidates from those four parties if we come first. The problem here Stuart is
02:51that that's never happened before in French politics because the choice of
02:55Prime Minister is up to the President. It's up to President Macron. He's the one
02:59who's going to choose who he wants as Prime Minister to govern with him after
03:03the election. So even if they do choose Jean-Luc Mélenchon or someone else
03:07Emmanuel Macron can override that decision and choose the person that he
03:10wants. So we don't know right now who is going to be Prime Minister after this
03:13election takes place. It looks as though unfortunately for President Macron his
03:18group is not going to come through on top so therefore he is going to be
03:21governing with another political movement which is called cohabitation in
03:26France which basically means he will be a lame-duck president. It's highly
03:30complicated isn't it? Questions have also been raised at the same time haven't
03:33they Philip about the funding of the election promises of both the far-right
03:37and the left-wing coalition. Take us through that. So if you thought what I've
03:41just been talking about is complicated stay tuned for this because it's even
03:45more complicated. I'm glad you've warned us. Right so let's look at the National Rally. As
03:49Clovis was just saying they have several policies they want to bring in
03:53scrapping the pension reform that was brought in by Emmanuel Macron until the
03:57autumn this year, bringing back the retirement age to 62, wanting to reduce
04:02VAT from 20 to 5.5% on essential goods but not until next year to cut VAT on
04:08energy and petrol from 20% to 5.5%. Well you've got to pay for this. Emmanuel
04:13Macron says it's going to cost a hundred billion euros. The Attitude Montaigne has
04:16done a study, that's a financial organisation, they say it's going to cost
04:1926 billion euros. The National Rally says well it's only going to cost 9.6 billion
04:24euros. We don't know how much it's all going to cost because no pricing has
04:27been officially released by the National Rally with an absolute audit of
04:33what they're going to propose. So let's look at the Popular Front on the other
04:37side. They want to scrap the pension reform, they want to bring back the age
04:40of retirement to 60, they want to freeze prices on essential goods, they want to
04:44increase the minimum wage and they want to cancel plans for an increase in gas
04:47prices. Emmanuel Macron says well all that's going to cost 286 billion euros,
04:52it's going to ruin the country, it's going to increase unemployment and
04:55increase taxes. We can't afford that. We haven't had a pricing from the Left Wing
05:01Alliance either. Just one thing to bear in mind is that the current French
05:05budget deficit is 3,100 billion euros. So there's no money anywhere to finance any
05:12of these policies. So I think that's why there's a lot of concern on the part of
05:15Emmanuel Macron as to exactly how this is going to be paid for if one or other
05:19of those two groups is going to win the election. Well whatever you think of
05:22French politics it's certainly going to be interesting over the coming weeks and
05:24months isn't it for the International Affairs editor there for us.