PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron is poised to rearrange his Cabinet after his new centrist party engineered a landslide in the country’s parliamentary election, enabling the government to quickly start passing its first big laws.
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe will resign “in the coming hours” and a new government will be named in the next few days, government spokesman Christophe Castaner said Monday on RTL radio. It’s a largely symbolic move required after a legislative election.
Since Macron’s new party, Republic on the Move!, won an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, Castaner said the government reshuffling would be “technical and not far-reaching.” He refused to say whether ministers who have come under corruption suspicions would keep their jobs.
Many victorious parliament members have not held office before. They started arriving Monday at the National Assembly to learn their way around before the first parliament session next week.
After Sunday’s vote, the number of female lawmakers is the highest ever at France’s lower house of parliament, reaching 38.7 percent — up from 26.8 percent in the outgoing Assembly.
After Macron vigorously campaigned on a promise of renewal of the political landscape, other parties also made efforts to promote new faces.
The National Assembly says new lawmakers’ average age is down from 55 to 49 compared to the previous term. The youngest is 23, the oldest is 79. Three-quarters are starting their first term at the National Assembly. Some of them previously had local political experience, but many are newcomers to politics.
Republic on the Move! and its allies from the Modem party took 350 seats — more than the 289 seats needed for a majority, according to the Interior Ministry’s definitive results.
Macron declined Monday to comment on the parliamentary vote. His government is expected to pass its first set of measures during a special parliamentary session starting on June 27 — laws to strengthen security, improve ethics in politics and reform France’s restrictive labor laws.
The conservative Republicans and their allies are the main opposition group in parliament, winning 136 seats. The Socialist Party, which dominated the outgoing Assembly, was the main loser in Sunday’s vote, winning only 30 seats.
French authorities have slightly corrected the voting results Monday after final count showed a Socialist won by 54 votes over a conservative in the oversea region of Mayotte. The contrary had been previously announced.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party won 17 seats, over the minimum of 15 needed to form a group, a tool that provides extra funds and speaking time.
The far-right party National Front party won 8 seats — up from 2 in the outgoing Assembly — including one for its leader, Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen on Monday praised Sunday’s vote as “historic” result but denounced an “anti-democratic voting system” that she says doesn’t represent the “real weight” of her far-right party in the country.
The National Front won 8.75 percent of the votes nationwide, which is more than the Socialists and Melenchon’s far-left party, yet it has less seats.
“We’re worth at least 80 (seats) in my opinion, given the energy we will use to promote our views,” Le Pen told a news conference.
Others agree that France’s current two-round voting system favors mainstream parties and their allies.
Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said the government wants to reduce the number of lawmakers in the future and change the voting system to introduce a partial proportional representation. This would give smaller parties better representation at the National Assembly.
SYLVIE CORBET
