In last month’s French parliamentary elections, political gravity finally got the better of Emmanuel Macron, who lost his absolute majority. Although his Ensemble party is still the largest single force, the inability to win a clear mandate in the National Assembly is a considerable defeat, just two months after he was reelected president.

With 242 MPs in the 577-member parliament, Macron’s coalition will be forced to negotiate with opposition forces to pass legislation. It has little hope for cooperation from the largest other bloc, the left-wing alliance made up of the Nouvelle Union Populaire écologique et sociale (NUPES). In elections for official roles in parliament this week, the president’s supporters instead made pacts with the third sphere: the old center right and even Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, which took 64 and 89 seats, respectively. Two members of Le Pen’s party were elected vice presidents of the National Assembly, aided by votes from Macron’s allies.

One prominent new MP on the Left is Aurélie Trouvé. After her work on Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s presidential campaign, on June 19 she was elected to parliament for a district in Paris’s northern suburbs. She is likewise the president of the so-called parliament of the NUPES, an informal body uniting the left-wing parties with associations, social movements, and cultural figures. An economist by profession, she was formerly president of the alter-globalist organization ATTAC, which she joined in the early 2000s. She is the author, most recently, of Le bloc arc-en-ciel: Pour une stratégie politique radicale et inclusive (The rainbow bloc: For a radical and inclusive political strategy).