French President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called early legislative elections in France this Sundayafter the far-right National Rally party (RN) – led by Marine Le Pen – achieved almost a third of the votes in the European Parliament elections in their country.
“In a few moments I will sign the decree calling for the legislative elections, the first round of which will take place on June 30 and the runoff on July 7,” Macron said in a televised message just an hour after the closing of the polling stations.
The French far-right candidate Jordan Bardella, 28, obtained between 31.5% and 32.4% of the votes in the European elections this Sunday, followed far by the ruling party Valérie Hayer (15.2%) and the socialist Raphaël Glucksmann (14% to 14.3%), according to the first estimates of the polling institutes Ifop and Ipsos.
“Tonight Macron is a weakened president” by this “resounding defeat,” said Bardella, who had called on Macron to bring forward the legislative elections normally scheduled for 2027. “This afternoon a wind of hope blew in France and it has only just begun,” he said to his supporters.
The French president lamented a bad result “for the parties that defend Europe” and estimated that “the rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger” for France. “This decision [de convocar elecciones] It is serious and important, but above all an act of trust,” he added.
Macron and his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, had been widely involved in the final stretch of the campaign with the aim of stopping the extreme right that, in the opinion of the French president, could “block” the EU, so, for the Analysts, the result represents a “sanction” to the ruling party.
RN’s result, one of the best in its history, also confirms the efforts of its leader, Marine Le Pen, to give a more moderate image to the formation that she inherited in 2018 from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, known for his racist and anti-Semitic comments.
“We are ready to exercise power if the French trust us in the next legislative elections,” said Marine Le Pen, whose party would present Bardella as a candidate for prime minister.
Early elections would not affect Macron, who would remain president until 2027, but he could have to share power with a government of a different political color shortly before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a “cohabitation” that has only occurred in twice, between conservatives and socialists, since 1958.
The unexpected announcement is a “risky bet” in the opinion of Céline Bracq, general director of the Odoxa polling institute, for whom RN, “could have a majority in the National Assembly (French lower house) and, why not, an absolute majority after [sus resultados] in the European elections”.
In the 2022 legislative elections, RN has already become the first opposition party in the lower house (88 deputies out of 577) with a tough speech against immigration and insecurity, and the ruling party lost its absolute majority, forcing Macron to agree with the right-wing party Los Republicanos (LR) on its most emblematic reforms such as labor or immigration.
Uncertainty hovers over whether the left-wing forces – socialists, environmentalists, communists and radical left – will manage to reissue a common front like in 2022, which ended up breaking due to disagreements between its most social democratic wing and the radical one embodied by La Francia Insumisa ( LFI).
With information from AFP
