In the news maelstrom surrounding Gaza and Trump last weekend, it would have been easy to have missed an important political development here in France that may signal the beginning of the end of the country’s political stasis.

Let’s go very quickly back to 2017: President Emmanuel Macron, the great hope for a more powerful Europe led by a newly energised France, had been elected on a tide of popular enthusiasm.  He had broken the old duopoly between Left and Right and was striding gloriously down the centre ground of French politics, liberally pilfering policies from both sides of the aisle.  And yet, even in 2017, the warning signs were there. Macron was effectively the last barrier standing between the Hard-Right and power.  If his project failed, the Centre would fail and Marine Le Pen would march into The Elysee.

I remember how, when we decided to move to France in October 2019, my wife and I discussed the dangers of the rise of the right-wing in France.  We had already lived the repercussions of the victory of populism in the UK after Brexit and we had no great desire to repeat the experience in France.  We recognised the dangers, but calculated we would have until 2027 before that reality arrived and if Macron made a success of demonstrating that the Centre Ground could provide answers to France’s problems, we figured he would spike Le Pen’s guns.

Moving forward to 2022: the Macron project was clearly in trouble.  His first term had been marred by the protests of the Gilets Jaunes and the farmers.  Macron had staked his success on tax cuts and encouraging international investment, gambling that the increase in investment would fill the state’s coffers.  Despite levels of investment which made France the darling of the international investor community, the demands of France’s generous Welfare State still outstripped the investment revenue raised.  By the time we got to Covid, the budget was already showing signs of strain and the Government’s ‘whatever it costs’ response to the pandemic bloated the public debt. 

Macron staggered into 2022, winning the Presidential election thanks to a vote against Marine le Pen and her newly-renamed Rassemblement National (RN) rather than any enthusiasm from the electorate for him and his Party. Hot-on-the-heels of the election came (as is normal in France), the Legislative elections.  And suddenly, the thinness of support for Macron’s project became starkly clear.  His party, re-named from En Marche to Renaissance, lost its majority.  But there were enough other centrist parties – including Horizon and Le Mouvement Democratique (MoDem) - to cobble together a governing coalition.

Perhaps the relative stability of this coalition lulled Macron into a false sense of security, but as we moved towards last year’s European Elections, it became clear to those of us handing out leaflets in the markets that the Centre Ground was folding fast: there was a real risk that this time it would not hold.  People I spoke to said they had had enough of voting ‘against’ something.  This time, they would vote ‘for’ what they believed in.  They were adamant in that view.  Even if it opened the door to the Hard-Right, they would not vote for Macron (who had made himself deeply unpopular by forcing through the Budget and the reform to the retirement age under Provision 49.3 of the Constitution). 

The RN did not need the door to be opened for them - they were more than capable of riding roughshod through and over it.  In total contrast to just about every facet of the campaign undertaken (‘led’ gives a mis-placed sense of purpose and intent) by the centrist Renew coalition, the RN were well-organised, well-funded, well-led and well-drilled. They were in the streets, in the communities and in the markets. Their communications machine was immaculate. And they named their entire list of candidates early, enabling every one of them to be fully involved from the moment the campaign began.

The RN cleverly turned the European Elections into a referendum on the Macron Presidency.  An approach which saw the number of Euro-Deputies in Macron’s Renew coalition halved whilst the RN’s representation swelled from 23 to 30.  In the face of this massive popular rejection and with the RN mounting incessant attacks on Macron to try and force an early Presidential election, Macron – perhaps relying on the advice of the Secretary General that his Renaissance party was in ‘good shape’ to fight a Parliamentary election (perhaps in a fit of pique at being so decisively challenged at the ballot box) - called a snap domestic Legislative Election. This was a bad decision.  The Party was, in fact, in no condition for an electoral battle, and it faced an RN riding high on its own wave of emotion, full of confidence after the European elections, well-funded, with excellent communications and a clear message. 

In response to Macron’s call to the country to ‘put up or shut up’, it quickly became apparent that France was in no mood to take the latter option. The RN performance in the first round of the elections was so impressive that it left them apparently heading for a large Parliamentary majority. So alarming was this prospect that the unthinkable happened – a non-aggression pact between Macron’s centrist coalition and the hastily-assembled leftist Nouveau Front Populaire (a coalition named deliberately in reference to the original Front Populaire that had blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936) which prevented the RN gaining a majority in the second round. 

Danger averted? Yes.  And No.  The RN were pushed into third place, but Macron’s gamble that The Centre would hold again, backfired.  His Coalition lost its majority and the Parliament was split into three roughly equal blocs (NFP with 181 seats, Macrons’ Coalition with 168 seats and RN with 143 – up from 89 in 2022). After Macron’s Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal resigned, Macron asked him to remain in office as caretaker to see France through the Olympics.

Given the NFP success, Macron should have subsequently offered the position of PM to the leader of the largest party in the NFP.  But asking Luc Melonchon, the firebrand leader of the far-left France Insoumise to be the French PM was unthinkable.  In desperation and after an extensive search, Macron turned to the veteran Republicain Party politician and EU-Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.  An appointment which, if it had the UK press up-in-arms (though it had nothing to do with the UK!), appeased the RN and in the process gave them the whip-hand over the Government.

But since the right-of-centre Republicains had trailed in fourth (with only 6.2% of the vote), Barnier’s legitimacy was limited from the outset – a lack of legitimacy which was fatal given the herculean task of getting a national budget through parliament.  The only way such an outcome was going to be possible was if Barnier could somehow fracture the surprisingly impressive solidity of the NFP by peeling off the Socialists.  His failure to do so meant that his end was inevitable.  After 90 days and many long hours of negotiation, Barnier put forward his Budget.  It was duly rejected and the NFP and the RN teamed up to topple him in a no-confidence vote, making Barnier the shortest-serving PM of the Fifth Republic in the process.

Macron then appointed the leader of MoDem and long-time political friend Francois Bayrou as PM.  At the end of last week, the news broke that where Attal, Macron and Barnier had failed, Bayrou had succeeded.  He had enticed the ship of the Partie Socialiste (PS) to sail out from the protective harbour of the NFP and refuse to support their motion of no confidence.  That news shattered, perhaps fatally, the NFP and removed the jack-boot of the RN from the Government’s neck replacing it with the softer slipper of the PS. 

La France Insoumise is incandescent with their erstwhile collaborators.  The RN are downcast.  But the rest of the French political establishment has heaved an almighty sigh of relief.  Bayrou is Macron’s fourth PM since 2022 - if he had failed, it would have been extremely difficult to resist calls for a Presidential Election and, with only the RN prepared for the ballot, the outcome of such an election could have been disastrous.

Bayrou’s pact with the PS is not an agreement to support.  Rather, in return for a number of expensive concessions (including re-opening the question of the retirement age and cancelling the dismissal of 4,000 teachers), the PS have agreed not to oppose Bayrou.  Whilst the PS non-opposition does not mean that Bayrou’s government is out of the political or economic woods, it does mean that the NFP’s no-confidence vote failed, enabling Bayrou to bring the government’s budget before the Upper Chamber (Le Sénat) yesterday, where, after three months of failed attempts, it was finally approved (despite, ironically, the PS voting against it!).  The budget must still pass the committee stage and a Vote in L’Assemblée Nationale at the beginning of February, but this is greater progress than Barnier managed. 

The new budget is essential not only to enable France to move on from the transitional budget under which it has been operating for the last six weeks, but also to begin to respond to demands from Brussels to reduce its deficit and meet the EU’s fiscal rules. For the first time since July, a certain measure of much-needed domestic political stability has been restored to France. 

And that stability is just as important outside France.  Bayrou described France and Europe as ‘besieged citadels’.  With the EU threatened externally by Trump’s tariffs, China’s aggressive trade policies, and Russia’s military expansionism; and internally by the rising wave of hard-right populist nationalists pounding at the doors of power across the continent, given succour by the victory of Trumpist populism in the US, it is no exaggeration to say that the European project is menaced as never before.  Macron once said to me ‘the EU is like a shark: it needs to keep moving forward to survive and succeed’.  That forward momentum relies on the continued engagement of core countries like France and Germany.  With the latter distracted by a bruising electoral battle, it is crucial for the EU not only that France re-discovers its stability but that it projects visionary and inclusive leadership of the bloc.

Much more than just the passing of his Government’s budget was at stake earlier this week. Macron has only two more years left of his second term. The French constitution reserves foreign and defence policy to the president.  It is to be fervently hoped that the new-found political stability at home enables him to dedicate his remaining time in office to making the domestic and cross-continental case for an empowered and confident EU that can play its full role on the international stage.  Failure to succeed in making this case risks leading to the failure of the EU.