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By VELIA GOVAERE -  Professor UNED

The convulsive map of Europe is shaking in the face of a political schism in France. The European Union sits on seismic political ground that has been shaky since the euro crisis in 2008.

First there were the troubles in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Greece. Then came Brexit. Russia's invasion of Ukraine unleashed an arms race with the return of "another" cold war. Each chapter is another piece of a teetering domino.

An increasingly universal phenomenon, the legislative elections in France have completed the contours of a crisis of political representation. Macron prevailed overwhelmingly against the xenophobia of Marine Le Pen, but that victory was deceptive because it derived from fear of an unstoppable extreme right, not from his strength.

There were five major contenders in the first round of the presidential election: Socialists, Republicans, Macronists and the two extremes on the right and left of the ideological spectrum.

Power would be decided in the second round. Which pair would face off there? The horror scenario was that Macron would be eliminated and that the runoff would repeat the Chilean scenario of the center collapsing and the extremes imposing themselves, leaving an electorate bewildered between two uncertainties: the fascist of Le Pen's National Rally and the hallucinatory leftism of Mélenchon's France Insoumise.

That did not happen. The final was Le Pen-Macron. The traditional parties, socialist and republican, collapsed, as in Chile. But, preemptively, the center reinforced Macron, in the first round, to avoid a second between Le Pen and Mélenchon.

Macron won and got a second mandate. A month later, came the legislative elections. The president needed, again, the absolute majority that allowed him to impose major reforms since 2017. That did not happen.

France has two features to choose the legislature: different dates between presidential and parliamentary elections and two rounds to choose local deputies.

The first round is so demanding that almost nobody gets elected. Not even Le Pen made it in the first round, and that with 54% of the votes in her locality of Pas-de Calais. Everything is decided in the second round, where parties of local dominance face each other in pairs.

Mélenchon's insubmissives were predicted to have the same local weakness they had in 2017, when they elected only 17 deputies. It was believed that the dispersed left would be diluted as it was then, when, as a whole and divided, it reached 72 deputies.

In that scenario, Macron would have achieved an absolute majority for the major and controversial reforms he dreamed of in France and to reaffirm his leadership in the European Union.

But in politics nothing is set in stone. Macron thought he would win by default and anesthetized the debate, and avoided the crystallization of reactions to his most controversial projects. It did not work.

Mélenchon managed to unite in a single electoral tent the entire left. He forged the New Popular Ecologist and Social Union (Nupes), the political miracle of a single left-wing candidacy in each constituency.

Another Macron. That rarely happens to a typically sectarian left. Its first unity comes from the Popular Front of 1936 with Léon Blum, when a social democratic government in better times achieved historic transformations, such as an eight-hour working day, paid vacations, union rights and collective bargaining.

By the way, the social reforms of the 1940s in Costa Rica, product of an emblematic national coalition, are also ideological, political and historical daughters of that French Popular Front, although in this navel of the world international paternity is rarely acknowledged.

Mélenchon's gamble was audacious: to achieve a parliamentary majority, to be prime minister, to appoint a cabinet and to guide policy. That is possible, even with Macron as president, because of a bizarre Gallic peculiarity, the "cohabitation": president elected by a party and prime minister derived from a parliamentary majority of another current. Mélenchon resigned as deputy for his area. It was all or nothing.

The political chessboard shifted. Nupes turned the usual left-wing sectarianism into a fortress. They were everywhere and in every place they were reinforced. As a result, the legislative representation of the left doubled from 72 to 147 deputies.

Macron, more and more alarmed, understood that the stars were aligned against him. But his steps were erratic. Born to stop the rise of the extreme right, nothing confused his supporters more than equating the two extremes. How to vote between Nupes and Le Pen?

The Macron of former times would have been blunt: "Not a single vote for the right". This is what Mélenchon proved to be in the presidential election, and it favored him over Le Pen. But the Macron of today, seeing his danger coming from the left, turned politician.

Between the two extremes, Macron said, "It depends, you have to see case by case." Really? That behavior helped the ultra-right, which multiplied by 10 times its legislative representation, with a record 89 deputies.

Going for power. In its editorial of June 16, the daily Le Monde labeled such behavior as politique politicienne, a pejorative qualification of positions that privilege maneuvers for power over principles.

The thing is that Macron puts himself above ideologies. For the French president, democratic dissatisfaction is a problem of efficiency. According to the providential vision he has of himself and his country, without him the French disorder would aggravate world chaos.

The extremes came out very reinforced. Macron was the big loser. His Together coalition won 246 deputies, short of 43 for the 289 it needed to have an absolute majority.

His party La République en Marche lost more than half of its seats, dropping from 314 to 154 deputies. In addition, it lost 62 local duels to Le Pen and 82 to Nupes.

His opponents are united by an absolute repudiation of his policies. The Republicans, Sarkozy's and De Gaulle's party, with only 60 deputies, are suggested as possible hinges or potential supporters of a new government coalition.

Perhaps, for their good fortune, Nupes will not be a left-wing bloc. The legislative strength obtained by each current broke the unity among them and each party of the coalition wants its own fraction. The dispersed universe of the French legislature is only less disconcerting than having a Macron forced to conciliate and to concede.

The backdrop to this drama is the growing democratic disaffection expressed in an abstentionism that keeps growing. Already 53% of the French do not see their problems being solved at the ballot box.

The fragmentation scenario will do little to convince voters otherwise and will result in paralysis of the essentials. This chaotic legislative is probably the end of Macron's dreams, dashing the illusions he had awakened in France and in the European Union, which is left without the firm leadership expected of him.