Le Pen has been defeated by the left, but who will govern France? Our panel responds

Le Pen has been defeated by the left, but who will govern France? Our panel responds

Tactical voting kept the far right from election victory – but with gridlock in parliament the future is unclear

France’s snap elections have produced the most fragmented parliament since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic. The two-round majority electoral system was designed to avoid political instability and contain the extremes. The system failed to achieve the first, with a new hung parliament divided into three comparable groups that will keep any government that is formed under constant threat of no-confidence votes. It only partially succeeded on the second; stopping the far-right National Rally (RN) from taking power, but not preventing its exponential growth in parliamentary seats from eight to more than 120 between 2017 and 2024.

Rym Momtaz is a consultant research fellow for European foreign policy and security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

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