A report in the US media outlet Bloomberg that French president Emmanuel Macron is considering calling fresh snap parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2025 has been denied by the Elysée.
But whether or not this specific information is right, it's still possible that France will face more elections in 2025.
Normally, this wouldn't even be a question as in France elections are done on a fixed cycle with presidents, MPs and mayors elected on fixed terms (usually for five years), making it possible to predict in advance when elections will be held.
The next scheduled elections in France are not until 2026 - they are les élections municipales where local mayors and councillors are elected.
However, these are not normal times.
The collapse of Michel Barnier's government at the end of last year means that extra parliamentary or even presidential elections are possible in 2025.
Parliamentary elections
Elections to select députés to sit in the Assemblée nationale were held on the regular cycle in 2022 and produced a parliament in which no party had an overall majority. In the summer of 2024 Emmanuel Macron called extra snap elections in order to try and produce some clarity - it's fair to say that this plan backfired and parliament ended up in a complete deadlock.
It was this stalemate that led to the fall of the Barnier government in December 2024.
Although France now has a new government under centrist prime minister François Bayrou, its position remains fragile and Bayrou himself could meet the same fate as Barnier.
However the French constitution states that there must be at least one year between parliamentary elections - meaning that the earliest an election could possibly be called in 2025 is July 13th.
But is this likely?
Here's the view of The Local's politics expert John Lichfield: "I don't see how Macron can avoid it.
"When a new election becomes possible in July, the clamour for that to happen will be very strong indeed, I suspect, because there won't be much agreed upon before then.
"Will the election happen in July? I doubt it will. Having an election in the middle of the French holidays - because it would have to be in late July or in August - is not very likely. I suspect if we have an election, which I think we will, it will be in September.
"But if there is an election in September, is it going to produce a parliament much more clearly aligned one way or another than the present one? I doubt it.
"Parliament, in a way, does reflect a three-way split in the country, between the radical left, the far nationalist right and a central section of people who cling to the old, consensual, pro-European politics.
"I don't see those three boundaries changing very much in a parliamentary election - presidential elections are different because because only two can get into the second round and it eventually has to swing one way or another. Parliamentary elections can produce chaos, as we've seen."
OK, so what about a presidential election?
As with MPs, French presidents are elected on a fixed term - Macron was re-elected in 2022 and his mandate runs until the spring of 2027. Macron himself cannot run in 2027 since French presidents are limited to two consecutive terms, but he could spark an earlier election if he chose to resign.
There have been calls by several politicians for him to do this. Immediately after Barnier was deposed, Mathilde Panot of the hard left La France Insoumise told reporters: "We are now calling on Macron to go. Bringing down Barnier is respecting the vote of the French and the sovereignty of people.
"The chaos is not us, it is Emmanuel Macron, and by this vote, it is all of Macron's politics that have fallen."
Macron himself, however, firmly ruled that out during his TV address to the nation in early December, saying: "The mandate that you gave to me democratically (in 2022) is a five-year mandate and I will exercise it fully, right up to the end."
In France a presidency ends early for one of only three reasons; the president resigns, they die in office or they are impeached.
Impeachment requires the support of a minimum of two thirds of MPs in order succeed - an attempt in 2024 to impeach Macron brought forward by Panot's LFI party failed to even gather enough support to get to the first stage in the (lengthy) parliamentary process.
Comments