With the summer holidays approaching, the shallowest season of French politics begins.
The starting gun is fired at the Recontres Économiques in Aix-en-Provence in early July. For a few days, Paris’s political and economic elite decamps to the south. The French Davos is French in the best and worst way. The upside: It is democratic, anyone can attend the open-air panel sessions between pine trees. The downside: The panelists suffer from the French misconception that a good argument is a long one. You may leave Aix not necessarily smarter, but at least with a large stack of business cards.
After Aix comes the season of summer receptions in Paris. Public affairs consultancies, think tanks, and the media all host their soirées in courtyards or on péniches (houseboats) on the River Seine. Sporting the latest Uniqlo linen shirt, glasses of chilled white wine at their lips, Parisian insiders discuss beach reading lists and compare notes on the best colonie de vacances, those summer camps in provincial France where their children will likely have their first kiss and perhaps their first break-up.
The background music to all this will be the FIFA World Cup.
Alongside Spain, France has been the most successful national football team of this century. Yet, the French still haven’t turned into football fanatics. The average attendance at a Ligue 1 game is 27,000. In Germany’s Bundesliga it exceeds 38,000. Many French only turn on the TV once Les Bleus, as the national team is known, reach the quarter finals of any tournament.
Should the team secure its third title on July 19, however, prepare for a wild night of dancing on boulevards and public squares across the country. Some cars will also inevitably burn. Every nation has its own rituals of celebration.
Political Football
But Kylian Mbappé lifting the World Cup would also be political.
Ever since the captain of the national team urged voters not to support the far right, the Rassemblement National (RN) has called the player from the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis a “loser.” In that context, each Mbappé goal is a blow to the RN. And if he delivers another tournament like in 2022, it may even overshadow a Paris court ruling on July 7 on RN leader Marine Le Pen’s eligibility to stand in the 2027 presidential election following her embezzlement conviction.
Then comes Bastille Day.
It is Emmanuel Macron’s last July 14 as president. He has invited the leaders of the 34 countries participating in the “coalition of the willing” supporting Ukraine to join the big military parade on the Champs-Élysées. French pensioners will watch Mirage jets flown by French-Ukrainian crews cross the Parisian sky on the television. Most others will miss it entirely, recovering from the bal des pompiers, the fire station parties taking place across the country the night before.
Once the final firework explodes above the Eiffel tower, the Parisian exodus begins. By early August, roughly half the city’s population will have vanished.
Out-of-office replies announce that Madame or Monsieur is “absent de la capitale jusqu’au 2 septembre.” Not being in the capital is synonymous with disappearing into the jungle. Scheduling calls becomes impossible. France’s fiber optics coverage is among the best in Europe, but in August internet connections tend to be unreliable.
A Peaceful Time
Les grandes vacances are the happiest and most peaceful time of the year. Every French child learns the mantra: “Dans les vacances, pas de violence!” Politicians understand they must also obey the rule. It is not the moment to annoy the French and disrupt the summer truce with pension reform debates.
Instead, wannabe presidents head for the beach and stroll through village markets. A photographer from Paris Match magazine inevitably appears. Candidates grant soft-ball interviews about their family, their provincial roots, and the restorative power of life away from Paris. By mid-August, the news flow dies down completely, and the country becomes almost as motionless as a pond at dawn.
Then, almost overnight, comes the rentrée.
Bronzed, armed with new resolutions, and riding a brief sugar high of optimism, the French return to ordinary life at the end of August.
Politically, the rentrée marks the beginning of a very long election cycle that will plunge the country each day a little deeper into collective hysteria. Television, Instagram, Sunday family lunches: As April 2027 approaches, escaping la présidentielle will become nearly impossible. Perhaps only US presidential elections generate a similar level of anxiety and drama. That is the charm and the price of either-or contests, where everything is reduced to a binary choice between two individuals.
Paris, We Have a Problem
The problem, however, is that the Squid Game that is a French presidential election is no longer cathartic. Yes, in a year’s time, France will have a new president. But the country could still be stuck with a fractured parliament and ineffective government.
If the RN wins the presidency—either Le Pen or her 30-year old number two, Jordan Bardella, will run—chances are it will struggle to secure enough urban constituencies to win the French parliament, the Assemblée National, in the June legislative elections that follow the presidential vote. If a center-right presidential candidate like Édouard Philippe prevails, it will likely be because voters will have united against the far-right candidate in the second round. But the anti-RN effect is no longer enough to get a parliamentary majority, as the last two legislative elections showed.
Chances are then that the new French president will be a “lame duck” from the start, unless she or he learns to rule by negotiation and compromise rather than by edict and force. Macron himself never learned to do German-style coalition politics and thus botched his second term. But with France facing a deepening budget deficit and nervous markets, France’s next president cannot afford failure.
The drama, in other words, is unlikely to end with France’s upcoming four-round election cycle. So do enjoy this coming calm summer. In a year’s time, things may not settle down quite the way they used to in France.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and the author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president. This fall his column will change its focus and name, turning into “Euroscope.”
