French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he was dissolving the National Assembly and calling early parliamentary elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat in European Parliament elections.
Addressing the nation from the Elysee presidential palace, Macron said: “I have decided to give you back the choice of our parliamentary future through the vote. That is why I am dissolving the National Assembly.” The voting will take place in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7, he said.
The move comes after the first expected results from France on Sunday gave Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party a wide lead in the European Union parliamentary elections, defeating Macron’s pro-European centrists, French polling houses said. It is also a huge political risk because his party could suffer even more losses, which could ruin the rest of his presidential term, which ends in 2027.
To make matters worse, the National Rally’s leading candidate, Jordan Bardella, all 28 years old, immediately adopted a presidential tone with his victory speech in Paris, which began with “My dear compatriots” and added that “the French people have their verdict, and it is final.”
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Macron acknowledged the blow of defeat. “I have heard your message, your concerns, and I will not leave them unanswered,” he said, adding that calling early elections only underlined his democratic credentials.
The four-day elections in the 27 EU countries were the second largest exercise in democracy in the world, trailing behind The recent elections in India. Ultimately, the rise of the far right was even more stunning than many analysts had predicted. France’s National Rally was just over 30%, or about twice as much as Macron’s pro-European centrist Renew party, which is expected to reach around 15%.
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s long-standing Social Democratic Party fell behind the far-right Alternative for Germany, which rose to second place. Projections indicated that the AfD would overcome a series of scandals involving its top candidate and rise to 16.5%, up from 11% in 2019. By comparison, the combined result for the three parties in Germany’s governing coalition was just 30%.
These elections come at a time when voter confidence in a bloc of some 450 million people is being tested. Over the past five years, the EU has been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, an economic slump and an energy crisis fueled by Europe’s biggest land conflict since World War II. But political campaigns often focus on issues of importance in individual countries, rather than on broader European interests.
