France’s parliament to vote on new Assembly president: What's at stake?
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00:00And France's new National Assembly is meeting for the first time today, since legislative
00:04elections ten days ago ended up in a split between three major political groups.
00:09The big focus this afternoon will be electing the new Speaker of the House, a role that's
00:13become even more important in the wake of the vote that put the new left-leaning alliance
00:17in first place, but without a full majority.
00:20We're going to talk more about this now with Clovis Casali, who joins me from the National
00:24Assembly.
00:25Clovis, first of all, tell us a bit more about why today is such an important day there.
00:29Well, according to protocol, the Speaker, or President of the National Assembly, is
00:34the fourth most important person in the state in terms of powers, of course.
00:40And ever since we had these snap elections, well, power has been shifting from the Élysée
00:46Palace to Parliament, with President Macron no longer enjoying a ruling majority, if you
00:52will.
00:53No bloc here at the National Assembly has an outright majority.
00:57So it's all about negotiations, and negotiations there have been in recent hours, until the
01:02very last minute, to see who's going to be siding with who, for the time being.
01:07You have got candidates for the main blocs, notably for the Macron-Renaissance party,
01:14Yelbrun-Pivet.
01:15She's, of course, the outgoing president.
01:18But negotiations here to decide who's going to be voting for who during the ballot in
01:24a few hours.
01:25And, of course, it's going to be very important.
01:28You can get as many as three rounds.
01:31In the first round, absolute majority to elect the president of the National Assembly.
01:35Second round, the same thing.
01:37And then in the third round, if there is a third round, it will be a simple majority
01:41rule.
01:42Clovis, now, there are three main factions at this point within the National Assembly.
01:47So who are the favorites from each of these groups to get this new Speaker job?
01:52Well, let me present to you quickly who are the three candidates, and then we'll see who
01:57are the favorites.
01:58For the bloc that has the most MPs, that's the left-wing, new popular front bloc you've
02:02got.
02:03They managed to decide on a common person.
02:07That is André Chassin, who's a communist MP, a veteran MP, if you will.
02:12He's got a lot of experience.
02:14He knows the rules here.
02:16He knows how it works.
02:17Will he get elected?
02:18We'll have to wait and see.
02:20Then you've got the centrist bloc of President Macron and its outgoing president of the National
02:26Assembly, Speaker Yael Brune-Pivet.
02:29And then you've got, for the far right, the National Rally candidate Sébastien Chenu.
02:36But the whole issue here is, will Yael Brune-Pivet, who's the outgoing president of the National
02:41Assembly, will she get the support in one of the rounds of the French far-right vote,
02:48of the conservatives, the mainstream Les Républicains party, or maybe even of the
02:53left-wing?
02:54That's probably unlikely.
02:55But if you ask me who's the favorite today, well, I can tell you, possibly the outgoing
03:00president of the National Assembly, Yael Brune-Pivet.
03:03Clovis, thank you for that.
03:04That's France 24's Clovis Casali at the National Assembly.