France Is Stuck in a Constitutional and Political Crisis it Can't Easily Escape

Constitutional guardrails baked into the French system after the Second World War and the fracturing of the national political picture are leaving the country with all appearances of having become ungovernable, after the latest Macron Government became the shortest-lived in modern history.

An election system that produces backwards results, a constitution that prevents fresh elections, and a president who refuses to consider resigning, no matter how bad things get. France is in a constitutional and political crisis — how did it get here, and what can be done? Can anything be done?

The French government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier — who managed the day to day running of the French government under the better known President Emmanuel Macron — collapsed on Wednesday. The censure motion against him left the political veteran, perhaps best known to readers for his hard-nosed role as the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in modern French history.

Brought down by irreconcilable differences between Barnier’s centrist-right urge to impose an austerity budget and the more populist sentiments of the Parliament, the most-whispered question now must surely be ‘what next’, and there aren’t many clear answers.

Ultimately, France is boxed in by its own 1950s-era constitution drafted to keep politics in the centre-ground and in the grip of the establishment, but which seems to have no answers when the political tastes of the voters change.

In many European systems such a political logjam is cleared by simply calling fresh elections. If the existing parliament can’t function, let a new composition be decided and with it the fresh legitimacy of a democratic vote.

Yet Macron has already tried that with the disastrous snap election in June meant to buttress his own mandate, but which further fractured parliament instead. One of these limiting guardrails in the French constitution means legislative elections can only be called, at most, once every 12 months. While this was designed to prevent unscrupulous presidents gaming the system by holding constant back-to-back elections until they get a result they like, there’s no baked-in allowance for when parliament simply can’t govern.

So no fresh elections until June 2025 and if a new government can’t be formed with the parliament they have now, the present ministers continue in their jobs but in a purely caretaker role, unable to pass new legislation. The state is in stasis.

French broadsheet Le Figaro suggests there is a way past this, by parliament passing an amendment to article 12 of the constitution to award itself the power to vote for elections in future, even over the head of the President.

This is very similar to what happened in Britain after a similar rule to limit the power of Prime Ministers was very rapidly found to have broken the constitution, leaving the UK with a government that couldn’t govern but no route to fresh elections. In the end, Parliament passed a new law to nullify the rule and made snap elections possible again.

Then there’s the question over whether the true problem is Emmanuel Macron himself. It is perfectly clear from new polling a comfortable majority French people blame Macron for the chaos.

59 per cent say he should resign, but Macron has said repeatedly he doesn’t feel responsible for what’s happening and intends to see his full term out, no matter how bad things get. And there’s no constitutional mechanism to force him out either.

But here’s the kicker. Even if Macron did surrender power the fundamental problems causing this governmental chaos don’t change, says French constitutional expert Jean-Éric Schoettl. To some extent, he says, Macron is just as much a symptom as a cause.

Either a new President or a new Parliament are both elected under the same electoral system, and by the same voting public as the ones we have now, with the former secretary general of the Constitutional Council prophesising new results just as unsatisfactory.

In short, he says, France remains “ungovernable”.

Again, accidents of history now fixed in France’s constitution are partly responsible. The country has a relatively novel election process, a two-round knock-out. All comers challenge the first stage and in most cases a handful of the highest-scoring make it to the round-two election a week later.

This system is highly disproportionate and a major contributing factor to the chaos in parliament. Indeed, it can produce really remarkable results: in this year’s election, Marine Le Pen’s populists came first by a considerable margin in both rounds of the national vote and yet came third in the number of seats it won in the parliament. And this is a feature, not a fault, given the two-round approach is intended to keep out non-establishment candidates.

Any good performance by a party form outside the mainstream in round one can be the focus of an ‘anyone but them’ coalition of all other parties in round two. This works as intended, and has been used very effectively against Le Pen’s populists for years.

Two-round voting may have seemed very important in the 1950s, but how long the public will feel it is serving the nation now the electorate has fractured and election results no longer even remotely resemble how the votes were cast will have to be seen. Again, this can be overcome with a constitutional amendment — which Le Pen has previously supported —  but by the time changes to snap elections and the voting system are rolled in, France is practically looking at the end of the Fifth Republic, and none of this necessarily benefits well the man with the power right now, President Macron.

As things stand, no end is immediately in sight. Practically all of France has decided it wants change but without any broad agreement on what that change should be, and so the voters are pulling in very radically different directions without any one faction strong enough to capture power and govern.

The left-wing New Popular Front has the most seats in Parliament, but not the votes. The populist anti-mass-migration National Rally of Marine Le Pen has the votes but is kept out  by the electoral system. She’s even being subjected to Trump-style legal proceedings now that could ban her from seeking office in future. The legacy conservative Republicans are in such disarray at the time of the last election nobody quite knew who the party leader actually was.

France needs change. Either the French voters need a new mindset — a rather authoritarian approach which was hinted at by President Macron in his emergency address to the nation Thursday night — or constitutional reform will relieve the pressure. Right now, neither seem likely.