POLITICO (“Macron gambles on snap election to fight far-right surge“):
European elections are meant to be worthy but boring exercises in centrist coalition building. Not this time.
A surge in far-right populism in France provoked President Emmanuel Macron into calling a high-risk national election that could determine the future not only of his country but of the European Union itself.
Across the Continent it was a good if unspectacular night for center-right and far-right parties and a terrible one for liberals and especially greens.
But in France, the far-right National Rally, led by Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic firebrands, completely crushed Macron’s liberal Renaissance and all other contenders.
The National Rally is on course to win 31.5 percent of the vote — more than twice the 14.7 percent projected for Macron’s liberal Renaissance party.
In a high-risk gamble to regain the political initiative, Macron bet that voters will turn back the far-right tide and show Marine Le Pen’s National Rally cannot win at a national level.
“France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony. To be French, at heart, is about choosing to write history, not being driven by it,” Macron said.
Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy, reckoned the bet would pay off. “It will almost certainly put a brake on Le Pen,” he said.
Le Pen declared her party “ready to exercise power,” and told her ecstatic followers: “I can only welcome this decision.”
The far-right surge in France was replicated elsewhere in Europe on a dramatic night of upheaval in EU politics. In Berlin, Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition parties were beaten by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which came second to the conservatives. Far-right parties were also on course to make gains in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, according to early estimates.
In France, the National Rally’s performance in the upcoming snap election on June 30 and July 7 will be closely watched as a harbinger of whether Le Pen — long the also-ran of French politics — can ride her party’s momentum into the presidency in 2027.
As president of the world’s seventh largest economy, Le Pen would almost certainly rock the EU to its foundations, prioritising patriotic interests over international collaboration. Celebrating her party’s win in Sunday’s EU vote, she said the result should send a message to Brussels and “put an end to this painful epoch of globalism.”
This is a hell of a gambit, in that it’s clear that the mood of France and much of the West has shifted in a nativist direction. In the short term, Macron is not risking the presidency, having just been re-elected in 2022. But a National Assembly led by the National Front/Rally party would mean Le Pen as prime minister and considerable check on Macron’s power.
PBS NewsHour (“Macron dissolves France’s National Assembly, calls snap election after defeat in EU vote“):
[Macron] said the decision was “serious” but showed his “confidence in our democracy, in letting the sovereign people have their say.”
“In the next few days, I’ll be saying what I think is the right direction for the nation. I’ve heard your message, your concerns, and I won’t leave them unanswered,” he said.
[…]
With Sunday’s decision, he is taking a big risk with a move that could backfire and increase the chances of Le Pen to eventually take power.
A scenario in which an opposition party would eventually win a parliament majority could lead to a fraught power-sharing situation called “cohabitation,” with Macron to name a prime minister with different views.
Le Pen, who head the National Rally group at the National Assembly, “welcomed” Macron’s move.
’We’re ready for it,” said Le Pen, who was the runner-up to Macron in the last two presidential elections. “We’re ready to exercise power if the French people place their trust in us in these future legislative elections. We’re ready to turn the country around, ready to defend the interests of the French, ready to put an end to mass immigration, ready to make the purchasing power of the French a priority.”
[…]
The National Rally’s lead candidate for the EU elections, Jordan Bardella, campaigned for limiting free movement of migrants by carrying out national border controls and dialing back EU climate rules. The party no longer wants to leave the EU and the euro, but aims to weaken it from within.
“Tonight, our compatriots have expressed a desire for change,” Bardella said. “Emmanuel Macron is tonight a weakened president.“
An official at Macron’s office said the decision to dissolve the National Assembly was justified by the “historic score of the far-right” that could not be ignored and the current “parliamentarian disorder.”
“You’re never wrong when you give the people a say,” said the official, who spoke anonymously in line with the practice of Macron’s office.
This is a bold move that have many of Macron’s backers shaking their heads. But it’s also in the spirit of democracy as it’s understood in most of Europe, which does not have the fixed terms Americans take for granted. The EU elections were something of a no-confidence vote for the direction in which Macron is leading, so it’s right to give the citizenry a chance to weigh in again.
NYT (“Battered by Far Right in E.U. Vote, Macron Calls for New Elections in France“):
“The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation and for Europe,” Mr. Macron said. “After this day, I cannot go on as though nothing has happened.”
The French leader has always been a passionate supporter of the 27-nation European Union, seeing in it the sole means for Europe to count in the world and calling on it to achieve “strategic autonomy” through ever greater integration. But the political winds have turned and many French people appear to favor Europe less, not more.
Mr. Macron’s decision, on the eve of the summer Olympic Games that begin in Paris in July, ushered in a period of deep political uncertainty in France. If the National Rally repeats its performance in national elections, the country could become nearly ungovernable, with Mr. Macron confronting a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in.
“It’s a serious, weighty decision,” he acknowledged. “But above all, it’s an act of trust” in French voters, he said.
[…]
He was under no obligation to dissolve Parliament, even if the European vote left him a reduced figure with three years of his presidential term still to run.
But he has often taken risks, rolling the dice to see if France awakens at last to what he perceives as a dire nationalist and xenophobic threat to the country’s liberty, democracy, openness and rule of law.
He called the far right nationalist wave a danger “to the place of France in Europe and the world” and noted that he was saying this “as we have just celebrated with the entire world the landings in Normandy and will in a few weeks welcome the world for the Olympics and Paralympics.”
Again, a huge risk. But it’s the right thing to do and I hope it pays off. There is precedent for that: the far-right has traditionally done considerably better in EU elections than national ones. It may well be that French voters see the former as a way of sending a message and the latter as more important in their daily lives.
