Less than two months after he was re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron has lost control of the French National Assembly following a strong performance by a left alliance and the far right.
He had called on voters to deliver a solid majority.
But his centrist coalition lost dozens of seats in an election that has left French politics fragmented.
The prime minister he had only recently appointed, Elisabeth Borne, said the situation was unprecedented.
A storm hit Paris as she returned to her Matignon residence from a long meeting at the presidential Élysée palace to say that modern France had never seen a National Assembly like this one.
“This situation represents a risk for our country, given the risks we’re facing nationally and internationally,” she said. “We will work as of tomorrow to build a working majority.”
That seems a stretch when the two other biggest groups in the Assembly are not remotely interested in collaboration. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire was adamant that France was not ungovernable, but said it was going to require a lot of imagination.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was enjoying his success in bringing together mainstream parties from the left with Communists and Greens into an alliance called Nupes.
He told supporters that the presidential party had suffered a total rout and every possibility was now in their hands.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally party were also in jubilant mood after turning eight seats into 89. The people had spoken, she said: Emmanuel’s Macron’s adventure was over and he had been consigned to a minority government.
If the prime minister was looking to the right-wing Republicans to help build a working majority, their message was not immediately encouraging. Party chairman Christian Jacob said the result was a “stinging failure” for a president now paying for cynically weaponising France’s extremes.
He’s not Jupiter any more, said Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law, referring to an earlier nickname ridiculing Macron’s supposed desire for power.
“For Mr Macron these five years will be all about negotiations and parliamentary compromise,” he told AFP.
It was all so different in April, when he defeated Marine Le Pen convincingly and won a second term as president. He had more than 300 seats, but to maintain his outright majority he needed 289 – and fell well short with 245.
More than half of voters abstained, with a turnout of 46.23 per cent.
Among the ministers to lose their seats was Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon, who lost to her far-right opponent by just 56 votes. Green Transition Minister Amélie de Montchalin was also defeated, but another key figure, Europe Minister Clément Beaune, survived despite losing in the first round.
One of Macron’s closest allies, the president of the Assembly Richard Ferrand, conceded victory to his Nupes rival Mélanie Thomin. Another casualty came on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where a secretary of state, Justine Benin, lost her seat. (BBC)