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Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Welcome to the French Politics Megathread! I decided to make this thread because my fellow French goons and myself are annoying everyone in the EuroPol megathread by obsessively posting about France and French politics. Also, the Germans have their own thread, and since we're AT LEAST as important as they are in world politics, it's only normal we'd have ours as well.

If you don't want a primer on French institutions and want to start shitposting right now, feel free to skip to the end of this huge ungainly post, where you will find a single rule for posting in this thread (hint: it's about posting while fascist).

France is a great country! A former colonial Empire on which the sun never set either, it still maintains a couple colonial possessions here and there and has a lot of influence on international politoh who am I kidding. 65 million people and maybe 100 million native French speakers worldwide, let's be serious. Our economy is mediocre, our politics are petty, and our international entanglements are bumbling.

France is a Constitutional Monarchy weirdass hybrid semi-presidential system where the King Président de la République is elected every five years. Here he is, in all his splendor:



Our current President is Emmanuel Macron, a babyfaced former banker who stabbed a lot of people in the back to get where he is now, including his mentor, former President François Hollande, and the senior members of the Socialist Party whom he had been governing with and under as Minister of the Economy. He is a, uh, "social-liberal", which is a nebulous term that is meant to obfuscate his resolutely pro-business and pro-employer bent. He owes his election to the fact that his main opponent, François Fillon, crashed and burned a few months before the election when it was revealed he was a thief had liberally paid his wife with public money for a nonexistent job.

The President is elected every 5 years in a national election in two rounds. The first round eliminates all but two candidates, and the second round decides the winner. His role in the French 5th Republic is theoretically limited: he chooses the Prime Minister out of the parliamentary majority, he can dissolve the Assemblée Nationale (one chamber of parliament), he signs the laws, he's the head of state and leads the armies. And a bunch of minor stuff. Technically, he's not supposed to be the one in charge of setting policy, because that's the job of the Prime Minister, but it turns out that the Prime Minister is more often than not an obedient soldier who bends to his will.

Speaking of the Prime Minister, here is our current Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe:



A former member of the right-wing Les Républicains party, he quit it (or was excluded from it?) upon his nomination. He's a former high level civil servant, who turned to the private sector and later on was elected mayor of Le Havre, a coastal city. A technocrat who will probably remain obedient and spend his time turning Macron's ideas into actual policy.
The Prime Minister's job is to get policy through Parliament, and then enact it. He is also in charge of the adult daycare full of bloated egos that is called the French government. He arbitrates disputes. The Assemblée Nationale has the power to destitute him, which is why he is usually selected from amongst the ranks of the majority. In this instance, it is not exactly the case, but the current Assemblée is fine with him. When the Assemblée and the President are not from the same party, then the Prime Minister is the one with all the actual power. This has happened three times since 1986, and will never happen again since the presidential and parliamentary elections now take place almost simultaneously and the Président and the Députés are all elected for 5 years.

The current government is kinda weird. It's full of people from both the PS and LR, with a bunch of centrists, an ecologist, and a few other unaligned folk. The right wing is in control of the money (they've got the Prime Minister, the Economy and the Finances), arguably also of the Interior (police and so on, Collomb's policy being a continuation of vallsian and guéantist policies before it), but they all have macronist drivers behind them. The PS holds foreign affairs and the army. Ecologist Nicolas Hulot holds the ministry of Ecology, but he's also handled by two mahouts. Who can tell what's going to happen with this weird Frankenstein's monster of a government? I certainly can't.


Anyway. The President and the Prime Minister are the two ugly heads of the executive hydra. The legislative branch is also divided into two: the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat.

The Assemblée (composed of Députés) is the "lower" chamber of parliament. They write the laws. It often turns out that the Assemblée will more or less blindly follow the lead of the government. It is uncertain what the current Assemblée will do - whether it will think by itself or blindly obey, because it is made up of a lot of novices and who knows? They might decide to rebel a bit?
Here's what it looks like:



  • The orange mass in the middle is Emmanuel Macron's ad hoc party, called La République En Marche, who did very well in the recent legislative election. It is mostly composed of nobodies, novices and of traitors to their former parties who felt the Macron wave coming and positioned themselves accordingly. So far, Macron's henchmen seem to be clamping down on the LREM majority, but only time will tell what will happen. Lost somewhere in that mass is also the centrist party that bode its time and finally gained relevance, the Mouvement Démocrate.
  • The blue mass on the right is Les Républicains, a right-wing formation that has had, uh, leadership issues in the past, with several high-profile figures vying for control over it. It lost quite a few députés to LREM, and a sizable fraction of it (the Union des Démocrates et des Indépendants a "centrist" party) is going to create its own group at the Assemblée to caucus with LREM.
  • The pink sliver on the left is the Parti Socialiste. It has been utterly murdered in the latest elections, losing hundreds of seats to Macron's LREM. The reasons are numerous: it was deeply unpopular following François Hollande's meek and mediocre presidency, it was repeatedly stabbed in the back by Macron at first, then by those who defected to follow Macron, then by former PM Valls upon his defeat in the PS primaries, then by itself.
  • The red sliver below the PS represents the two far-left forces, who can't stand each other because they're both full of egotists who all want to lead the far-left movement. It's really loving sad. Half of them are part of the Parti Communiste Français, a reformist socialist party. They are powerfully entrenched in several areas, and the Party is still quite strong, and that's why they still exist. The other half are part of La France Insoumise (INDOMITABLE France), a popular/populist movement that soared during the presidential election, almost carrying its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the second round, and then got severely hampered by, well, you know how leftists are, bickering and self-aggrandizing and all that. Also we're like Bernie Sanders, we would have won without the combined forces of Capital and the Media arrayed against us. Probably.
  • The dark grey patch below Les Républicains is the Front National, a bunch of fascists. They got to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, and again in 2017, but they've never won. Yet.
  • There are also a few corsican nationalists, a sovereignist idiot, an Occitan shepherd, and a couple other weirdos in there.


The other half of the parliament is the Sénat. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, because it's boring, full of old people and it smells like pee, but basically it's a solidly right-wing institution that can be easily circumvented through a clever application of constitutional tools. Its members are not directly elected by the people. LREM has not had an occasion to establish a foothold in there yet, but it's unlikely that they will because the Senate favors well-established parties. Whatever. Who cares about them, right? I'm also not going to provide any information on the judicial branch. Click on the wikipedia links provided above if you want more details.


SPECIAL THREAD RULE: Other than the regular forums rules, I'd like it if the mods enforced an additional rule ITT: Please don't post while under the influence of fascism. Thank you very much.
NEW RULE: Starting on page 2, every page must have a youtube link to some good music.

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jun 30, 2017

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Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Reserving this to copypaste good effortposts by people who want to contribute to our understanding of this shitshow.

EDIT: best posts ITT:

x420ReDdIT_Br0nYx posted:

«Et la séparation des pouvoirs ?!» m'écrié-je, alors que je rapetisse et me transforme en épi de maïs

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Sep 13, 2018

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
So, I know nothing of French politics but I'm eager to learn. Why was Hollande considered such a failure? I actually had a bit of hope when I heard you guys had elected a left-winger back in the day.

Hambilderberglar
Dec 2, 2004

So is this thread officially the Frexit from Europol? Has Marine won after all?

Condiv
May 7, 2008

Sorry to undo the effort of paying a domestic abuser $10 to own this poster, but I am going to lose my dang mind if I keep seeing multiple posters who appear to be Baloogan.

With love,
a mod


Gort posted:

So, I know nothing of French politics but I'm eager to learn. Why was Hollande considered such a failure? I actually had a bit of hope when I heard you guys had elected a left-winger back in the day.

because he was more an obama-style "left-winger"

BluesShaman
Apr 25, 2016

She wore Blue Velvet.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

Also, the Germans have their own thread, and since we're AT LEAST as important as they are in world politics, it's only normal we'd have ours as well.

:lol:

Germany has been more important than France in world politics since 1940.

Only French persons think France is important.

R. Mute
Jul 27, 2011

BluesShaman posted:

:lol:

Germany has been more important than France in world politics since 1940.

Only French persons think France is important.
You sure got him there, bud.

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


BluesShaman posted:

:lol:

Germany has been more important than France in world politics since 1940.

Only French persons think France is important.

I can't argue that Germany has had a big role as an international victim ever since 1945.
Not a role as an international actor though

EDIT: we whooped your country's rear end in 1944 and we're ready to do it again

Sneaks McDevious
Jul 29, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

BluesShaman posted:

:lol:

Germany has been more important than France in world politics since 1940.

Only French persons think France is important.

:thejoke:

jabby
Oct 27, 2010

That was a good first post.

As a BritGoon, can I ask: how hosed are the people of France with Macron in charge? He seems to have swept in on a wave of 'radical change' but almost all the policy I've heard about is rabidly pro-business and anti-worker.

As a socialist who voted for Corbyn, having someone like Macron in charge would be my nightmare. Is it going to be a shitshow, or could his extreme brand of neolibralism actually work?

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

jabby posted:

That was a good first post.

As a BritGoon, can I ask: how hosed are the people of France with Macron in charge? He seems to have swept in on a wave of 'radical change' but almost all the policy I've heard about is rabidly pro-business and anti-worker.

As a socialist who voted for Corbyn, having someone like Macron in charge would be my nightmare. Is it going to be a shitshow, or could his extreme brand of neolibralism actually work?

I was listening to the bbc world service and someone described him as the French Tony Blair and I instinctively recoiled as the realization hit me.

The X-man cometh
Nov 1, 2009
Is he better than Fillion?

Condiv
May 7, 2008

Sorry to undo the effort of paying a domestic abuser $10 to own this poster, but I am going to lose my dang mind if I keep seeing multiple posters who appear to be Baloogan.

With love,
a mod


Lawman 0 posted:

I was listening to the bbc world service and someone described him as the French Tony Blair and I instinctively recoiled as the realization hit me.

he's even helping an american idiot wage war around the world!

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

Condiv posted:

he's even helping an american idiot wage war around the world!

my favorite macron moment so far is he has literally damned hundreds of thousands of people to an early death because he to out-alpha the man with biggest inferiority complex in the world, Donald trump and made him so mad that he quit the paris deal. lol
Justin Trudeau has realized that praising dear leader will get him at least some goodies.

R. Mute
Jul 27, 2011

The thing to know about Macron is that voter turnout for the legislative election was 48,7%. I'm not one of those people that's saying Le Pen will get in at the next election, she never will. But democracy can die even if outright fascists aren't the ones pulling the switch.

Dommolus Magnus
Feb 27, 2013

Flowers For Algeria posted:

I can't argue that Germany has had a big role as an international victim ever since 1945.
Not a role as an international actor though

EDIT: we whooped your country's rear end in 1944 and we're ready to do it again

Oh! Are the brits jumping in to save you this time, too?

Under PM Corbyn, hopefully. I for one wouldn't mind surrendering to the great jam man. :allears:

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


Lawman 0 posted:

I was listening to the bbc world service and someone described him as the French Tony Blair and I instinctively recoiled as the realization hit me.

He's probably worse than that, Blair's position basically just accepted the changes that Thatcher made as a fait accompli and the new status quo, this guy promises to actually, actively do the things that Thatcher did in the 80s

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Gort posted:

So, I know nothing of French politics but I'm eager to learn. Why was Hollande considered such a failure? I actually had a bit of hope when I heard you guys had elected a left-winger back in the day.

You want my honest answer? He and his team had zero charisma and were unable to control the narrative about their successes and failures. Hollande has a goofy face and a goofy voice, and there lies the reason of his unpopularity. Because let's be honest, he was not very competent and his New Labour-ish policies were ineffectual at best and harmful at worst, but he was certainly not as bad as Sarkozy. And yet Sarkozy still kept a core of popularity.
The right hate him because he's a Socialist, and therefore a leftist idiot. The left hate him because he betrayed everything he stood for and followed a deeply liberal agenda and furthered the overton window shift to the right. The "center" will prefer Macron, a young-ish technocrat who speaks their language. Even the PS hate him, because he's a useful scapegoat.

Poor François Hollande. I pity him. He's unpopular, but transparent at the same time: in the end, people simply didn't care about him. I remember back in 2012, I woke up one morning and looked at my ex and said "Sarkozy isn't President" and we shared a smile. Not so with Hollande today.

Dommolus Magnus posted:

Oh! Are the brits jumping in to save you this time, too?

Under PM Corbyn, hopefully. I for one wouldn't mind surrendering to the great jam man. :allears:

I'll readily admit that the British contributed to the liberation of France in their way. But let's be honest. It was mostly a French effort.

The X-man cometh posted:

Is he better than Fillion?

Yes, but only in the sense that dying in your sleep with a pillow over your face is better than dying in a ditch after a severe beating.

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Jun 28, 2017

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

friendly reminder Hollande turnednfrance into a proto venezuela.

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


LeoMarr posted:

friendly reminder Hollande turnednfrance into a proto venezuela.

:what:

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon
no regionalist group in the assembly :negative:

the dream is dead

Deltasquid
Apr 10, 2013

awww...
you guys made me ink!


THUNDERDOME
I didn't realize Mélanchon was so rabidly anti-EU that he'd throw poo poo fits for seeing the flag hanging at the Assemblée Générale lol.

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon
there are 18 non-inscrits députés, those who haven't joined a political group.

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Deltasquid posted:

I didn't realize Mélanchon was so rabidly anti-EU that he'd throw poo poo fits for seeing the flag hanging at the Assemblée Générale lol.

One grumpy remark upon seeing the flag in the middle of the floor of the Assemblée Nationale is not really "a poo poo fit".

Nyandaber Z
Apr 8, 2009

R. Mute posted:

The thing to know about Macron is that voter turnout for the legislative election was 48,7%. I'm not one of those people that's saying Le Pen will get in at the next election, she never will. But democracy can die even if outright fascists aren't the ones pulling the switch.

Democracy is already dead, it's just not aware of it yet and keep walking as a rotten corpse. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's too late to change course now and we'll have to crash and burn before we can rebuild, both for France and for the UE.

exmarx
Feb 18, 2012


The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.
How closely do députés typically stick to the party line when voting on legislation?

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


That is a glorious OP.

Any bets on how long Hulot will last before he's strangled by France's agricultural interests?

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon

Junior G-man posted:

That is a glorious OP.

Any bets on how long Hulot will last before he's strangled by France's agricultural interests?

i give him six month tops before he quits in disgust

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


Kurtofan posted:

i give him six month tops before he quits in disgust

Sounds about right. I was at least very happy to see the back of Segolene Royale; I'd have thought she'd have turncoated her way to EM has well.

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon

Junior G-man posted:

Sounds about right. I was at least very happy to see the back of Segolene Royale; I'd have thought she'd have turncoated her way to EM has well.

the guy who unseated her five years ago, olivier falorni, is one of those left radical party (read center-center-left) mp who wants to work with macron. i don't know about royal but i'm not sure she's a macronist.

the left radical party had a group five years ago but now they're reduced to four non-inscrit députés, you'd think they'd causus with the "new left" group or the modem

Bulbo
Nov 4, 2012

Junior G-man posted:

Sounds about right. I was at least very happy to see the back of Segolene Royale; I'd have thought she'd have turncoated her way to EM has well.

She has!
She's been given a sinecure created by Sarko for Rocard "ambassadrice chargée des pôles arctique et antarctique", aka ambassador to penguins.

Kurtofan
Feb 16, 2011

hon hon hon

Bulbo posted:

She has!
She's been given a sinecure created by Sarko for Rocard "ambassadrice chargée des pôles arctique et antarctique", aka ambassador to penguins.

hahaha

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


Bulbo posted:

She has!
She's been given a sinecure created by Sarko for Rocard "ambassadrice chargée des pôles arctique et antarctique", aka ambassador to penguins.

Wait. What the gently caress?

Is that a full-time, remunerated gig? Do you have a few more details?

Bulbo
Nov 4, 2012

Junior G-man posted:

Wait. What the gently caress?

Is that a full-time, remunerated gig? Do you have a few more details?

She's in charge of the international negociations regarding the arctic and antarctic zones (drilling rights, new waterways opening due to melting icecaps...).
And of course it's remunerated: 47000€/y + 30000€/y for expanses related to her mission.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Bulbo posted:

She has!
She's been given a sinecure created by Sarko for Rocard "ambassadrice chargée des pôles arctique et antarctique", aka ambassador to penguins.

also, polar bears. Clearly, her pay should be doubled :colbert:

unwantedplatypus
Sep 6, 2012
And here I was thinking that the French were all effete wine-drinking socialists.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


unwantedplatypus posted:

And here I was thinking that the French were all effete wine-drinking socialists.

Nope, they're just as mean, spiteful and nasty as everybody else. The wine is better though.

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


exmarx posted:

How closely do députés typically stick to the party line when voting on legislation?

It really really depends on how powerful the government is. Under Sarkozy, the members of the then-UMP majority were fully under control. Fillon may have been grumpy as Prime Minister and he may have resented and despised Sarkozy, he was overall an obedient tool. Not so under Hollande: a significant (but not significant enough) fraction of the PS députés were in open rebellion against the rightwards shift of the Valls government, going so far as to vote against key pieces of legislation and almost managed to file a motion of censure that could have brought the government down.

As for "Party lines", it's a bit more complicated. The government and the party are different beasts, and the government takes precedence and the party follows the government. The opposition generally follows party lines.

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Bulbo posted:

She's in charge of the international negociations regarding the arctic and antarctic zones (drilling rights, new waterways opening due to melting icecaps...).
And of course it's remunerated: 47000€/y + 30000€/y for expanses related to her mission.

She literally just watches penguin videos all day.

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botany
Apr 27, 2013

by Lowtax

Flowers For Algeria posted:

She literally just watches penguin videos all day.

do you need an ambassador to dogs by any chance? asking for a friend :sweatdrop:

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