Summary of the day
The French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the second round of elections to ensure there is no trouble.
Late last night, the French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said candidate Prisca Thevenot – the government spokesperson – and members of her campaign team were attacked by four individuals while putting up election posters. “Violence and intimidation have no place in our democracy,” he said.
Today, Thevenot thanked law enforcement and said “violence is never the answer.”
The French prosecutor’s office said it opened an investigation into an assault with a weapon against a public official.
A new poll from Ifop shows that 47% of voters believe the far right National Rally will win an absolute majority of seats in Sunday’s election.
The far right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen argued her party can still win an absolute majority. “I think there is still the capacity to have an absolute majority with the electorate turning out in a final effort to get what they want,” she said.
Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the French Socialist-Place Publique list in the European elections, has cautioned against a belief that “we have saved things” already and called for urgency to defeat the far right.
The Ecologists’ Marine Tondelier has criticised the far right National Rally’s Jordan Bardella, arguing that his party is allowing some candidates who made racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic comments to remain on the ballot.
Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the second round of elections to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, Reuters reported.
The interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening.
Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem”, he told France 2 TV.
