French elections: How do they work and why are they so significant? – BBC News

Whoever wins, Mr Macron has said he will not resign as president.

If his party loses, and either National Rally or the New Popular Front win, that leaves almost three years of “cohabitation”, or power-sharing, when the president of one party heads the state and another party runs the government.

It’s happened before, with domestic policy in the hands of the prime minister and cabinet and foreign and defence policy in the hands of the president.

Not necessarily. Mr Macron decides who will lead the next government, according to the constitution. But he does have to reflect the make-up of the new Assembly, so if National Rally are the predominant party he could find it hard to choose someone else.

And if RN wins an absolute majority, Jordan Bardella would be the obvious choice as nominated by the party itself. RN campaign posters proclaim him as prime minister, at 28 he is a big presence on TikTok and he has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019.

But Mr Bardella has himself ruled out becoming prime minister if RN doesn’t secure that absolute majority: “I don’t want to be the president’s assistant.”

A relative majority, he said would leave him unable to act: “I’m not going to sell the French people measures or actions that I couldn’t follow through.”

Not for more than 20 years, as parliamentary elections now come hard on the heels of presidential votes, and voting preferences do not change much within that time.

There have been three periods of cohabitation in the past:

1997-2002 Socialist Lionel Jospin was prime minister under centre-right President Jacques Chirac

1993-95 Centre-right Prime Minister Edouard Balladour worked with Socialist President François Mitterrand during his second term

1986-88 Jacques Chirac was prime minister under President François Mitterrand

But nothing has really prepared France for the kind of cohabitation that could occur after 7 July, with either the far right or elements of the far left trying to get along with a centrist president.

For years Marine Le Pen has sought to “de-diabolise” or detoxify her party from the antisemitic and extremist roots of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his fellow founders of the National Front, which she renamed as National Rally.

However, its strict anti-immigration policies remain and a ruling earlier this year by the Council of State, France’s highest court for administration, confirmed it could be considered “extreme right”.

France football captain Kylian Mbappé has warned his compatriots “the extremes are at the gates of power” and that France is “at a very important moment of history for our country”. Jordan Bardella swiftly hit back, criticising multimillionaire “sports figures giving lessons to people struggling to make ends meet”.

The RN has long called for a ban on Muslim headscarves in public, although Mr Bardella has now said this would not be a priority until the next presidential election.

National Rally has taken money from Russia and Marine Le Pen has been pro-Kremlin, anti-Nato and anti-EU. And yet many of their extreme positions on leaving Nato’s integrated command and increasing ties with Russia have been quietly dropped.

Leaving the EU has not been on the agenda since 2022. Instead, Mr Bardella focuses on cutting VAT (sales tax) on energy and a list of 100 essential goods and repealing the Macron pension reforms in a matter of months.