Shortly before the end of the French EU Council Presidency, Emmanuel Macron's power is faltering.

Without an absolute majority in parliament, the French President will find it difficult to initiate reforms to secure pensions, climate protection, digitization and competitiveness.

It is questionable whether the retirement age can be raised to 65 with such weak support in parliament.

Even with a large majority of 360 MPs, Macron failed in his first term of office on a pension reform.

This does not bode well for the restructuring of the national budget.

The loss of a majority in Parliament will weaken Macron on the European stage.

The National Assembly cannot forbid him from making telephone calls to Vladimir Putin.

Foreign and defense policy remains a "domaine réservé" of the President.

But it can be expected that the new parliament will be more open to debate and will put issues on the agenda that Macron would have preferred to decide on without a parliamentary debate.

The President will remain in charge of the next Franco-German Council of Ministers, which is not scheduled to take place until September.

But it does not make Franco-German cooperation any easier that from now on he can only reach agreements subject to a hypothetical government majority.

Is Borne a miscast?

The question will also arise as to whether Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is not the wrong choice for the parliamentary campaign of persuasion.

The experienced top official was unable to break away from her prefect appearance during the election campaign.

She remained colorless and won very narrowly in her constituency in Normandy.

In any case, a major government reshuffle is imminent, as voters voted to withdraw their confidence in the ministers in two key areas – health and environmental and climate protection.

A serious blow for Macron is that two pillars of his system of power, Parliament President Richard Ferrand and parliamentary group leader Christophe Castaner, were punished by the voters.

France's new parliament reflects the highly fragmented party landscape.

The right and left fringes have strengthened, the center around Macron has shrunk to 245 MPs.

The presidential group is 44 votes short of an absolute majority.

However, there is little sign of a mood of change.

With 133 seats, the left-wing alliance NUPES clearly missed the absolute majority of 289 seats.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon will neither become prime minister nor opposition leader.

The extreme right around Marine Le Pen enters the National Assembly with 89 deputies.

Their good performance shows that the so-called Republican protective wall against the Rassemblement National (RN) is working less and less.

The RN is deeply rooted in large parts of the country

Macron's party has itself to blame for this.

The election recommendations were anything but unambiguous and reinforced the impression that the argument that the RN was “unelectable” was being misused to retain power.

The result achieved under the conditions of first-past-the-post system shows how deeply rooted the extreme right is in large parts of the country.

That is shocking.

In the National Assembly, however, there is now an opportunity to unmask the arguments and to hold debates, which the presidential faction in particular has often avoided.

The signs of fatigue in French democracy are unmistakable.

More than half of those entitled to vote stayed away from voting.

The younger generations in particular have lost confidence in Parliament.

The outcome of the election is an opportunity to revive French parliamentarism.

That gets exhausting, especially when you know the tendency of the left and right spokesmen to get drunk on their own tirades against the government.

From now on, Macron has no choice but to invent a new method of government.

He can dissolve the National Assembly in a year at the earliest.

France will not dominate the willingness to compromise and consensus building à l'allemande overnight.

But it is worth trying a parliamentary reading after the monarchical reading of the constitution.

That could also be a signal for the ailing civil rights to take responsibility for the country again.

Of course, it is more convenient to claim a seat in the opposition, like LR party leader Christian Jacob.

France will only become ungovernable if everyone insists on their traditional roles.

Then the blockade could no longer be averted – also to the detriment of Europe.