The Paris mayor has sought to reassure visitors that the festive mood at the Olympics will not be dampened by Marine Le Pen’s electoral successes in France’s snap parliamentary elections, with less than a month to go before the city hosts the Games.
“The party will not be spoilt,” Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo told broadcaster France 2 on Tuesday. “I say to visitors from the world over – come over! Because Paris is a city that stands up for freedom and is a city of resistance against the extreme right.”
Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) and its allies finished first with 33% of the vote in Sunday’s first round.
Before the second, decisive round on 7 July, at least 200 candidates have withdrawn in an effort to build a united front capable of halting Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege with no governing experience, from becoming prime minister.
Le Pen on Tuesday said her party would seek to form a government even if it fell short of an absolute majority, in a reversal of the party’s previous stance. The party could cobble support from a minimum of “for example, 270 deputies” and then find support from 19 more MPs in order to make Bardella prime minister, she said.
“If we then have a majority, then yes, of course, we’ll go and do what the voters elected us to do,” she told broadcaster France Inter.
The party’s worst results, however, were in Paris, where all of the party’s candidates were eliminated in the first round. Instead Parisians cast their votes for the leftwing New Popular Front alliance (NFP), which nationally earned 28% of the vote, and Emmanuel Macron’s broad alliance of centrists, who gained 22% of the vote across the country.
Hidalgo, who would not say if she would stand next to Bardella, should he become prime minister, at the opening and closing ceremonies, insisted that the focus at the moment should be on halting the RN’s rise to power. “We have to do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said. “Why? Because it would be a catastrophe for the country. It would be a surrender of our values.”
She described the RN as a party “anchored in a programme of extreme racism”, pointing to the party’s promises to bar dual nationals from strategic jobs and the party’s language around immigration.
Hints of how the RN would act once in power could be seen in countries where the far right was already governing, such as Italy and Argentina, she said. “What do they do when they’re in power? They constantly, permanently attack women, foreigners, so-called minorities and people who are gay,” she said. “They attack all fragile people, they sow chaos.”
The RN on Tuesday said it would withdraw one of its candidates in north-western France after a photo emerged of her wearing a Nazi hat bearing a swastika, media outlet France Bleu Normandie reported. Ludivine Daoudi had placed third in the constituency, with 20% of the vote in the first round.
As questions swirled over the extent to which Macron’s centrist alliance would employ tactical alliances to block the RN, Hidalgo insisted there was no other choice. “We have to do it because if we don’t, it’s not just a hangover that we’ll have on 8 July,” she said. “It will be a disaster for the country.”
She linked the political turmoil to Macron’s shock decision to dissolve parliament “on a whim” and call snap elections. “Emmanuel Macron bears major responsibility for everything that has happened,” she added. “He’s obviously the one responsible for this chaos.”
In the weeks leading up to the snap election, Macron had reportedly suggested that the sporting event could work in his favour as he scrambled to shore up votes for his struggling alliance.
“I don’t think they [voters] want Olympic Games that look bad,” Macron told reporters on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Italy, according to Le Monde. “French people are concerned about the image of France, in its ability to welcome the world.”
Bardella hit back, saying that he had confidence in the ability of state services to organise the games. “If we win the parliamentary elections, I will not change the arrangements that have been in place for several months. This event must be a major success for the nation,” Bardella said on social media at the time.
The interview with Hildalgo came days after it emerged that the Seine River had again failed water quality tests, casting doubt over one of the longest-running, most expensive and high-stakes endeavours of the Games: the plans to host the open-water swimming competition and the swimming leg of the triathlon in the river.
Tests completed last week suggested that levels of E coli bacteria – an indicator of faecal matter – remain far above the upper limits imposed by sports federations.
On Tuesday Hidalgo said she was still planning to swim in the Seine and that she had invited Macron to join her. She did not address the failed test results, which were released by her office.
“After letting the storms pass, we are in the process of setting the date which will be after 14 July but before the Olympics of course,” she said.
