France is set to become historically difficult to govern as impasse looms over new government

One word encapsulates French politics after last week’s parliamentary elections: impasse.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally failed to gain a majority — but neither did the leftist alliance New Popular Front nor the centrists of President Emmanuel Macron.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics fast approaching, the result is a divided Parliament, which could lead to months of political maneuvering and painstaking negotiations to secure a coalition government in a country with no recent history of bipartisan power-sharing.

Meanwhile, the far right has not gone away. Le Pen will likely be focusing on France’s biggest political prize: the 2027 presidential election.

Here’s what to know:

The French political system has never been in this situation before. After the second round of legislative elections, no party won a majority 289 seats out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, the French equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The New Popular Front, a broad leftist alliance comprising the radical France Unbowed along with communists, greens and moderate socialists, achieved the best result.

But the 182 seats it won were still far short of the number needed to govern. The centrist coalition of Macron, a group called Together for the Republic, came second with 168.

Although these centrists and leftists had teamed up and agreed to endorse each other’s candidates where necessary, the National Rally — a populist rebranding of France’s old National Front party — came third with 143 seats.

Led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the party had looked set to win outright following the first round of voting last month. But the tactical-voting agreement, known as the “cordon sanitaire,” or “Republican front,” held during Sunday's