The campaign to impeach and remove President Emmanuel Macron over his refusal to install the preferred pick of the far-left for prime minister after July’s snap legislative elections is officially underway after the move cleared its first legal hurdle in the French parliament.
On Tuesday morning, the office of the National Assembly voted by a margin of 12 to 10 to deem impeachment proceedings against President Macron “admissible” for debate in the wider parliament at the Palais Bourbon, marking the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic a measure to remove a president has passed such a threshold, Le Figaro reports.
The vote was passed purely on partisan lines, with the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party of former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon having enough seats in the committee to override neo-liberal lawmakers loyal to Macron and the populist National Rally of Marine Le Pen by two votes.
“The Macronists had to refamiliarize themselves with democracy,” said LFI president Mathilde Panot following the vote, adding joyously: “It is an unprecedented event in the history of the Fifth Republic which has just occurred.”
The move, which was first threatened by Mélonchon and Panot last month, came in response to President Macron’s refusal to select a member of the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition of various leftist parties, including the LFI, which was hastily cobbled together ahead of July’s elections.
Macron’s decision to install Brexit villain Michel Barnier of the centre-right Les Republicains sparked accusations against the Élysée Palace of conducting a “coup against democracy” given that the NFP won the most seats in the National Assembly after joining forces with Macron in a strategic voting alliance to prevent the ascendant National Rally from taking power.
However, despite attempts from the far-left to claim the mantle of a democratic mandate, the NFP fell well short of the seats needed to hold a majority in the National Assembly and secured millions fewer votes than Le Pen’s National Rally, which now sits as the largest single party in the parliament.
Further undermining the NFP’s attempt to brand itself as the defender of French democracy, the leftist group had nominated Lucie Castets, a socialist deep-stater civil servant for prime minister, despite her never being elected by the French people.
While the impeachment proceedings clearing the first hurdle does mark a historic event, it is doubtful that the far-left will be successful in their aims of ousting the president. In a few weeks, the measure will be put before the Law Committee of the National Assembly and then likely before the entire parliament.
First, La France Insoumise will need to submit a resolution to convene a “High Court” in the Senate and National Assembly. This measure would only require one-tenth of the 577 parliamentarians, meaning that the LFI could pass it alone on a party-line basis. However, for the resolution to be approved, a vote of two-thirds in both houses would be required. A further two-thirds vote would then be needed to impeach the president.
Given that the Socialist Party (PS) — a member of the New Popular Front — has refused to back the move, the NFP would at most only be able to muster 151 votes, far fewer than the 384 needed for impeachment. The far-left has also failed in recruiting the populist National Rally to their cause, meaning that the measure was likely doomed from the start due to the current breakdown of seats in the parliament.
Commenting on the start of impeachment proceedings, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said on Tuesday: “In an attempt to make people forget its multiple compromises with Macron, the far-left is defending a procedure for impeaching the President of the Republic that has no chance of succeeding given the divisions on the left.
“This smokescreen manoeuvre will not make the French forget that LFI came to Macron’s aid in 2017, and did it again in 2022, before negotiating electoral agreements to withdraw in June 2024 to save their seats. This sinister comedy has gone on long enough, Macron and LFI are linked in the collapse, disorder and chaos into which the country has been plunged.”