The French president, Emmanuel Macronannounced the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of elections for June 30 and July 7 after the defeat in the European elections this Sunday.
In the legislative elections, the far-right National Group (RN) of the historic leader swept Marine Le Pen.
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”I couldn’t continue, at the end of this day, looking the other way. Added to this situation is the fever that has infected the public and parliamentary debate in our country,” said Macron, in a televised address from the Elysee Palace, the seat of government.
“That is why, after having proceeded to the prior consultations of article 12 of our Constitution, I decided to return the word of our future parliamentarian through the vote,” he added.
Very close there, in Belgium, the prime minister Alexander De Croo, of the Flemish liberal party Open Vld, announced his resignation after the poor results obtained by his party in the elections. “For us it was a particularly difficult night, we lost,” he said before the advance of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA and the far-right Vlaams Belang, as well as the Flemish socialist party Vooruit, which also achieved good results. “This is not the result what I expected and I will not shirk my responsibilities. Starting tomorrow I will resign as Prime Minister (…) I will fully concentrate on current affairs. “I will prepare everything for a good transmission to my successor or successors,” he stated.
Great advance of the extreme right in France
Macron weighed the severe setback of his list in the European elections this Sunday, in which his party obtained 15% of the votes, half of those obtained by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which reached 30%, according to the exit polls.
The leader who headed the RN list for these elections, the emerging Jordan Bardellahad already requested the calling of elections to the National Assembly in a first intervention after knowing the polls.
Jordan Bardella, emerging figure of the French far-right (Photo: REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier)By: REUTERS
The new elections will arrive only two years after those of June 2022, in which Renacimiento, the head of state’s party, lost the absolute majority it had had in the 2017-22 legislature, which generated problems for the Government when it came to look for parliamentary partners to approve your reforms. For example, the much-discussed pension reform was approved last year without a vote in the National Assembly.
The French far-right declares itself ready to reach the government
After the official announcement, the leader of the far-right National Group (RN), Marine Le Penstated that she is prepared “to assume power” in the legislative elections that President Macron announced this Sunday after his defeat in the European elections.
“We are ready to assume power if the French give us their trust,” Le Pen assured her followers after her party achieved just over 30% of the votes, according to exit polls.
All background
Since the proclamation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of early legislative elections has occurred on six occasions, the last this Sunday by decision of President Emmanuel Macron.
After the setback in the European elections, in which Marine Le Pen’s far-right swept and doubled the Macronist list, the French leader chose to “return the word” of the “parliamentary future through the vote”, in a scrutiny that will be held in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7.
Before Macron, there were five antecedents. The most recent in 1997 under the presidency of the conservative Jacques Chirac, who, fearing an imminent economic crisis, decided to call voters to the polls.
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Chirac lost his bet and the Assembly ended up dominated by a left-wing coalition that would lead the socialist Lionel Jospin to become prime minister, imposing a long cohabitation on Chirac until 2002.
In 1986, the socialist president François Mitterrand dissolved a conservative Assembly. At the end of these elections, which did not coincide with the presidential elections as they currently do, the Socialist Party (PS) obtained a relative majority. Also, a recently elected Mitterrand in 1981 opted for dissolution to “inherit” a clearly conservative Assembly that emerged from the 1978 elections.
In June 1981, the PS achieved an absolute majority.
The other two dissolutions are the work of the conservator Charles de Gaulle. In 1962, he did so due to a motion of censure led by the socialists along with other parties that opposed a Constitutional revision to establish direct universal suffrage for the election of the president. De Gaulle emerged stronger from those elections and this review went ahead. In 1968, De Gaulle called early elections in May of that year, shortly after the student revolution of that year, which gave the conservatives an absolute majority.
