2002 French legislative election in the context of "Jean-Marie Le Pen"

The National Assembly (French: Assemblée nationale [asɑ̃ble nɑsjɔnal] ) is the lower house of the bicameral French Parliament under the Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (Sénat). The National Assembly's legislators are known as députés ([depyte]) or deputies.

There are 577 députés, each elected by a single-member constituency (at least one per department) through a two-round system; thus, 289 seats are required for a majority. The president of the National Assembly, currently Yaël Braun-Pivet, presides over the body. The officeholder is usually a member of the largest party represented, assisted by vice presidents from across the represented political spectrum. The National Assembly's term is five years; however, the president of France may dissolve the assembly, thereby calling for early elections, unless it has been dissolved in the preceding twelve months. This measure has become rarer since the 2000 French constitutional referendum reduced the presidential term from seven to five years; in the four elections between 2002 and 2017, the president of the Republic had always had a coattail effect delivering a majority in the assembly election two months after the presidential election, and it was accordingly of little benefit to dissolve it. In 2024, it was dissolved following the announcement of the results of the European Parliament election. Due to the separation of powers, the president of the Republic may not take part in parliamentary debates. They can address the Congress of the French Parliament, which meets at the Palace of Versailles, or have the address read by the presidents of both chambers of Parliament, with no subsequent debate.

The Gauche Plurielle (French for Plural Left) was a left-wing coalition in France, composed of the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste or PS), the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français or PCF), the Greens, the Left Radical Party (Parti radical de gauche or PRG), and the Citizens' Movement (Mouvement des citoyens or MDC). Succeeding Alain Juppé's conservative government, the Plural Left governed France from 1997 to 2002. It was another case of cohabitation between rival parties at the head of the state and of the government (Jacques Chirac as president and Lionel Jospin as prime minister). Following the failure of the left in the 2002 legislative election, it was replaced by another conservative government, this time headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The Plural Left government initiated several reforms, including the CMU social welfare program for indigents, the PACS civil union law, the 35 hours workweek, the creation of the FNAEG DNA database, but also several privatizations (France Télécom, GAN, Thomson Multimédia, Air France, Eramet, Aérospatiale, Autoroutes du sud de la France). It also passed the SRU Law forcing each commune to have a 20% quota of housing projects, the 15 June 2000 Guigou law on presumption of innocence, the Taubira Law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity, and the LSQ law concerning security. Furthermore, Jospin's government carried out a partial regularization of undocumented immigrants.

Legislative elections were held in France on 10 June and 17 June 2007 to elect the 13th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic, a few weeks after the presidential election run-off on 6 May. 7,639 candidates stood for 577 seats, including France's overseas possessions. Early first-round results projected a large majority for President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and its allies; however, second-round results showed a closer race and a stronger left. Nevertheless, the right retained its majority from 2002 despite losing some 40 seats to the Socialists.

Taking place so shortly after the presidential poll, these elections provided the newly elected president with a legislative majority in line with his political objectives – as was the case in 2002, when presidential victor Jacques Chirac's UMP party received a large majority in the legislative elections. It is the first time since the 1978 elections that the governing coalition has been returned after a second consecutive election. The majority, however, was slimmer than the "blue wave" predicted by opinion polls (blue being the colour of French conservatives).