A blitzkrieg campaign began on Monday in France after Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to dissolve the Assembly and call legislative elections at the end of June, a presidential poker move which places the far right in a position of strength and plunges into uncertainty a pillar country of the European Union (EU).
To everyone’s surprise, Mr. Macron drew this constitutional weapon, rarely used in France, on Sunday evening, after the triumph in the European elections of the National Rally (RN, far right), which collected twice as many votes as the presidential Renaissance party ( 31.36% versus 14.60%).
Elsewhere in the EU, the far right confirmed its dynamic on Sunday, notably in Germany where the AfD rose to second place ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD, without presenting a common front or upsetting relations. by force. The grand European coalition of the center-right and social democrats should thus retain the majority in Brussels.
Despite his heavy defeat, Chancellor Scholz ruled out early legislative elections in Germany, refusing to follow the path opened by Emmanuel Macron who attempted an “extreme” and “perilous” gamble, according to editorialists, by calling a new election.
“I have confidence in the people,” the French head of state insisted on Monday as three weeks of a tense campaign began.
The first round will be held on June 30, the second on July 7, and France could have a new government when it hosts the Paris Olympic Games (JO), from July 26 to August 11.
These elections “will not disrupt the Olympics,” said the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach on Monday. The Kremlin said it was “following carefully” the political situation in Europe.
Youth organizations, including student unions, have called for a rally against the far right on Monday evening in Paris. “The youth piss off the National Front,” indicates the call to demonstrate at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. in Quebec) which is circulating on social networks.
“Mobilization”
In France, where the far right obtained one of the highest scores in the EU on Sunday, the RN has never been so close to power and its young leader Jordan Bardella, 28, who led the party list to the European, is already applying for the position of Prime Minister in the event of victory.
The RN is “ready to exercise power”, said Marine Le Pen on Sunday, who lost in the second round of the last two presidential elections to Emmanuel Macron. The victory of his party could lead to “cohabitation” between the two heads of the executive, an institutional situation tested three times under the Fifth Republic.
Surprised by the dissolution, the presidential camp is trying to put itself in battle order. “It’s a shock, very brutal for everyone but we’re getting back to it,” said MP Éléonore Caroit, spokesperson for the Macronist group in the Assembly.
“There was another way,” lamented outgoing President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet.
According to his entourage, the president assumes “the risk” of a new “anti-Macron referendum” but hopes that voters will not use the legislative elections as a “release”.
Dissolution, “it’s something that Macron matured over the weekend to the point of saying to himself that there was only that to do” in view of the results, slips a minister.
Divisions on the left
“We have no right not to […] “have” courage, he told a resident during a trip Monday to the ruins of the martyred village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, scene of a massacre of civilians committed by the Nazis in 1944.
At his side, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for “never” to forget “the damage caused in Europe by nationalism and hatred!” “.
“Europe such a singular, crazy project of peace. There is nothing obvious, spontaneous, natural in this project,” added Mr. Macron.
For the French left, negotiations are likely to be difficult between parties which formed a coalition for the 2022 legislative elections but were divided during the European campaign, particularly around the war in Gaza.
In the meantime, time is suspended in the National Assembly, where the examination of a bill on the end of life had to be suspended. “It’s a bit of a blow. Nobody saw the blow coming,” slips a parliamentary source.