French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for a rally against the “extremes” in view of the legislative elections he called after his camp’s debacle in the European elections and the unprecedented victory of the far right.
For his first public speech since the dissolution of the National Assembly on Sunday, the Head of State also highlighted a need for “clarification” to try to justify this decision which has plunged the country into uncertainty and implodes the Republican right around a possible alliance with the National Rally (RN, far right).
“I fully accept having triggered a movement of clarification. Firstly because the French asked us to do so on Sunday. When 50% of French people vote at the extremes, when you have a relative majority in the Assembly, you cannot tell them: “We continue as if nothing had happened,” he declared.
Despite its declining popularity and the polls which make the RN the favorite in the elections of June 30 and July 7, Emmanuel Macron called on the parties of his majority to begin discussions with other political groups which will have “been able to say no to extremes” in order to “build a sincere and useful common project for the country” to “govern”.
Listing a few programmatic measures (major debate on secularism, telephone ban for children under 11, etc.), the president above all put the extreme right, which would advocate “exclusion”, and the extreme left back to back. embodied by the party La France insoumise (LFI), which he accuses of “anti-Semitism and anti-parliamentarism”.
“I say the extreme right when speaking of the National Rally, because its leaders continue to say that there are real and false French people, continue to consider reducing press freedom or rejecting the State of right,” he said, also castigating the “unnatural alliances” that are being formed on the right and the left.
On the diplomatic level, the Head of State also accused the RN on Wednesday of maintaining an “ambiguity towards Russia” and of wanting “the exit from NATO”, also reproaching in the extreme left to nourish a “balkanized vision […] of our diplomacy” “. »
Exclusion
Among the opponents of the Macronist camp, negotiations continue in a climate of tension.
Announced on Tuesday, the rallying of the leader of the Republicans (LR, right) Eric Ciotti to the National Rally has created a psychodrama and an exceptional office of the party heir to General de Gaulle must meet in the afternoon to decide on a possible exclusion of the manager.
Eric Ciotti “will no longer be president of the Republicans at 3 p.m. […] he will be dismissed,” said LR senator from Paris Agnès Evren on Wednesday morning on BFMTV.
Delighted with his take on the war, the leading figure of the RN Marine Le Pen praised the “courageous choice” and “sense of responsibility” of Eric Ciotti.
On the left, the four main parties (LFI, PS, Ecologists, Communist Party) are trying to unite to present “single candidates from the first round” of the legislative elections. The outlines of a joint program are being developed and the choice of a leader remains pending.
An agreement has been reached on the distribution of constituencies within this new “Popular Front”, LFI deputy Paul Vannier in charge of negotiations with the other left-wing parties told AFP on Wednesday.
In the meantime, the RN, continuing its momentum, garnered 35% voting intentions in the first round of the legislative elections, according to an Ifop-Fiducial survey for LCI, Le Figaro and Sud Radio presented on Tuesday.
In the majority as in the opposition, the debate is also rising on the place that Emmanuel Macron should play in the campaign.
His former prime minister Édouard Philippe thus judged it “not completely healthy” for the president to get too involved, pointing in passing to an “anger” aroused, according to him, in public opinion, by the dissolution.
“The President of the Republic must set a course, a vision, but he is not there to campaign in the legislative elections. So I will not campaign in the legislative elections,” assured Mr. Macron during his press conference.
“I do not want to give the keys to power to the far right in 2027,” he also declared, referring to the scheduled date of the next presidential election.