PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron and his allies on Sunday lost their absolute majority in the National Assembly and with it control of the reform agenda, a crushing outcome for the newly re-elected president.
There is no set script in France for how things will now unfold as Macron and his centrist Ensemble bloc seek a way forward to avoid paralysis. Here are possible scenarios.
A COALITION DEAL
This was the rule during the Third and Fourth Republics pre-1958, but coalitions were so unstable that governments often lasted only a few months or so.
This instability, which some observers say even led to France's early defeat to Nazi Germany in 1939 by leaving the country unprepared, is why post-war leader Charles de Gaulle drafted a new constitution for the Fifth Republic with wide-ranging presidential powers and a two-round system that was designed to give the president a strong majority.
As a result, coalition building has not been a feature of post-war politics in France, leaving the political class with minimal experience or tradition in consensus building, unlike other countries such as the Netherlands or Germany.
Macron may still try to reach out to the conservative Les Republicains party, the only mainstream party with the numbers to push him over the 289 threshold for an absolute majority.
Last week, Macron quietly reached out to the head of the Senate, LR veteran Gerard Larcher, a government source told Reuters, suggesting he was paving the way for such a scenario.
Senior LR officials, however, were on Sunday swift to pour cold water on a formal coalition.
DEALS ON A BILL-BY-BILL BASIS.