They will present a single candidacy, while Jordan Bardella says that they will support the candidates of Los Republicanos, a conservative party that was the key to the Government
Contacts, meetings… The different political blocs in France are planning strategies for the legislative elections that will be held on June 30 and July 7. They are done in advance, after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, dissolved the courts and called new elections last Sunday, after the failure of the legislative elections in which the extreme right of Marine Le Pen swept.
The left has announced that it will create a Popular Front to stop National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen’s party, in the Assembly. Ecologists, socialists, La Francia Insumisa and communists will present single candidates in the constituencies, despite the disagreements that exist between these political families.
They have already joined in the 2022 legislative elections, under the alliance called Nupes, which was dissolved precisely due to differences on issues such as the war in Gaza or Ukraine. Also due to the excessive prominence of the leader of La Francia Insumisa, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Now they are once again making a common front against Le Pen and proposing a rupture program, a roadmap for the first 100 days of an eventual Government.
The Government does not have a majority in Parliament, which is divided into three blocks: the extreme right, the left and the presidential majority. The first polls have already been done on what the ballot boxes would yield. According to one from Harris Interactive for Challenges and RTL, Marine Le Pen’s party would win the elections, with 34% of support. In 2022 they achieved 18%. The left would have 22% and Macron’s bloc (Renacimiento, his party, and Modem and Horizons) would be in third position, with 19%.
As the legislative elections take place in two rounds (June 30 and July 7), it is difficult to project how the second vote will evolve, so these polls are taken with a grain of salt, cautiously. At the moment, the courtship of The Republicans begins, a conservative party that, at the beginning of Macron’s second term, was the support of the Government to carry out the laws. In the last year, this support has been weakening, especially after the approval a year ago of the controversial pension reform, which raised the retirement age and which was opposed by almost the entire parliamentary group.
Aware that this group is the key, Jordan Bardella, LR candidate for the European elections and the brand new winner of the elections on Sunday, has already extended his hand to them. He did it yesterday and today he has said that he will support the candidacies of this party in the constituencies where they are presented. “In the candidates that my political movement will support for these legislative elections, there will not only be people from the National Group, there will also be people from the Republican Party,” he said.
The Republicans have not yet commented on what their position will be: Xavier Bertrand, of the party, has asked the president of the party, Eric Ciotti, to clarify his position. At the moment they have said that there will be no agreement with Macron for the elections. They have not said that there will not be one with Le Pen. “The DNA of the party has never been in the extremes, never the National Front, never Le Pen”has said.
French President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to give a press conference this afternoon, with no scheduled time yet. The unions have called for mobilizations against the extreme right this weekend, to which the left has said it is going to join. Already yesterday there were spontaneous demonstrations in some cities. In Paris, several hundred people gathered in the Place de la République, so far without major incidents.
