French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday he was dissolving the National Assembly and calling early legislative elections, setting off a political earthquake after his party suffered a humbling defeat at the hands of the far right in elections for the European Parliament.
Macron’s decision represents a major roll of the dice, with France’s far right polling at its highest-ever level, virtually all other parties in disarray, and the Paris Olympics just around the corner.
The call for snap polls follows a bruising defeat in Sunday’s EU elections, in which the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen won 31.5 percent of the vote, according to Ipsos projections – more than double the support for Macron’s party.
In an address to the nation, the French president said he could not ignore the warning from voters, noting that in total far-right parties in France had won almost 40 percent of the vote. He said elections for the National Assembly would be called for June 30, with a second-round vote on July 7.
“This is an essential time for clarification,” he said. “I have heard your message, your concerns and I will not leave them unanswered ... France needs a clear majority to act in serenity and harmony.”
The announcement was naturally welcomed by Le Pen, whose National Rally will have its best chance yet of seizing power in the upcoming parliamentary vote.
“We are ready to take power if the French people have confidence in us in these forthcoming legislative elections,” said the runner-up in the last two presidential elections. “We are ready to put the country back on its feet.”
Should Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party win a shock majority in the National Assembly, the prime minister’s job would likely go to her protege Jordan Bardella, the telegenic 28-year-old who led the far right to its highest ever score in the EU elections.
In such a scenario, Macron would still direct defence and foreign policy, but he would lose the power to set the domestic agenda – and be remembered as the president who let in the far right.
A humbling for Macron
The outcome of Sunday’s elections means France, a founding member of the EU, will send to Brussels the largest contingent of far-right, Eurosceptic lawmakers among the 27-member bloc.
The National Rally has traditionally done well in European elections, topping the vote in 2014 and in 2019. Its massive 15-point margin of victory on Sunday – up from just 1 percent five years ago – suggests both that Le Pen’s party is at a historic high and that Macron’s camp is in a position of unprecedented weakness.
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The result marks a stinging rebuke of France’s Europhile president, who rose to power in 2017 on a promise to ensure French voters would “no longer have a reason to vote for extreme parties”.
Macron had upped the stakes during the campaign, warning that “Europe is mortal” and recently flagging the threat to the continent from a resurgent far right at D-Day commemorations.
His defeat is also a crushing blow to the country’s youthful prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who was appointed less than six months ago to breathe new life into Macron’s second term in office.
“Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,” Attal told voters days before the election, suggesting they would regret placing their future in the hands of Eurosceptics. Such dire warnings appear to no longer hurt Le Pen’s party, which abandoned its calls for “Frexit” long ago.
According to an Ipsos survey on Sunday, 68 percent of the RN’s backers said they voted “first and foremost to voice their opposition to the president and his government” – against 39 percent nationwide. And while the broader electorate said they voted predominantly based on EU issues, a massive 73 percent of Bardella’s voters said national concerns took precedence.
The same survey said immigration and the cost-of-living crisis – RN’s main vote winners – were the dominant issues on voters’ minds. Such topics are likely to remain high on the agenda as parties now scramble to prepare for parliamentary polls in just three weeks’ time.
Left divided and beaten
For the country’s fractious left, the European polls provided another sobering reminder of the pitfalls of division, just two years after the NUPES alliance came second in parliamentary polls behind Macron’s ruling coalition – raising hopes of an end to the factionalism and bickering that has hampered left-wing candidates over the years.
Those hopes were dashed in the run-up to the EU polls, leaving five separate lists to fight over a diminishing share of the electorate. At roughly 33 percent, their combined tally is three points shy of the far right’s cumulative score.
Tellingly, the main casualties of division were the Greens, the first party to announce it would stand alone rather than under the banner of the NUPES. That decision backfired spectacularly, with the Greens now projected to win just 5.5 percent of the vote, down from 13 percent in 2019, thus barely passing the 5% threshold to send lawmakers to Brussels.
France Unbowed, the radical left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, fared better than five years ago with 8.7 percent of the vote – a higher-than-expected tally that partially vindicates its decision to put the war in Gaza at the heart of its campaign. But its dominance on the left will now be challenged by a resurgent Socialist Party, which is projected to win 14 percent of the vote.
It helped, perhaps, that the moribund Socialists were not led by one of their own, but rather by European lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann, a former writer and commentator who emerged as the campaign’s third man – and a potential new champion for centre-left voters desperate for an alternative to Mélenchon.
Glucksmann and LFI were at loggerheads throughout the EU elections campaign, meaning chances of reviving the NUPES alliance in time for the June 30 polls look bleak, though left-wing politicians rushed to call for unity following Macron’s announcement.
‘Russian roulette’
Glucksmann said he was “flabbergasted” by Macron’s gamble, accusing the French president of bowing to the National Rally’s calls for a snap vote. He added: “This is an extremely dangerous game with democracy and institutions.”
Conservatives in the opposition were equally scathing, slamming a rash move that leaves them ill-prepared for battle after bruising European elections.
“Dissolving without giving anyone time to organise and without any campaign is playing Russian roulette with the country's destiny,” said Valérie Pécresse, a former presidential candidate for the centre-right Les Républicains, which took just over 7 percent of the vote on Sunday, their lowest-ever score.
There are ominous precedents for Macron.
The last French president to call a snap election was Jacques Chirac in 1997 – and his gamble is remembered as one of the greatest own goals in modern French politics.
Chirac’s rash move only further angered already disgruntled voters, who stripped the conservative president of his majority and forced him into a “cohabitation” with a left-wing government headed by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
While voters today are arguably just as disgruntled, France’s political landscape is radically different.
Macron and the far right have effectively blown up the traditional left-right divide, making it more difficult for mainstream parties to alternate in government. And while two-round elections have so far barred the far right from power, voters have become increasingly weary of rallying behind the anti-Le Pen front – making the outcome of the upcoming election highly unpredictable.
- View the projections and final results of the European elections on our dedicated page.
