PARIS (AP) — With their own fate and that of France at stake, candidates made their final campaign efforts Friday ahead of the first round of voting in a crucial and polarizing parliamentary election in which President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government risks a potentially fatal defeat suffering of the rising extreme right wing.
With opinion polls indicating that the anti-immigration National Rally could significantly increase the number of lawmakers in the National Assembly, the election could radically change the trajectory of the European Union’s largest country and Macron – who has been a driving force in EU decision-making – for the remainder of his second and final presidential term.
A far-right victory, following a surge in French votes for the European Parliament this month, risks saddling the president with a Rassemblement National prime minister, Jordan Bardella. That would take the EU’s second-largest economy into uncharted territory, given that the two men’s plans for France’s future are so fiercely opposed that a forced power-sharing marriage between them could be conflicting and divisive.
Bardella, a 28-year-old protégé of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and with no governing experience, says he would use prime ministerial powers to stop Macron from continuing to supply Ukraine with long-range weapons for the war with Russia. He cites fears that their ability to strike targets in Russia could bring nuclear-armed France into direct confrontation with the nuclear-armed government in Moscow.
But France’s two-round system — the first vote on Sunday will thin the field for a decisive follow-up vote on July 7 — means the final outcome of the election is highly uncertain. That gave opponents of Rassemblement National the chance to believe that, while they were canvassing for votes, they could still lay the groundwork to prevent a legislative majority in the second round for the nationalist, far-right party with historic ties to anti-Semitism.
In the final stretch before the end of the campaign on Friday night, the National Rally faced renewed criticism over its plans to curtail the rights of French dual nationals by freezing them from certain jobs in the security, defense and nuclear industries. National Rally leaders have given conflicting information about how many people would be affected, but have said it would be dozens, and about the exact scope of the restrictions.
Critics say the planned policy change would create an underclass of French citizens and reveal a discriminatory mindset at the heart of the party, which has long been accused of stoking hostility toward immigrants, Muslims, Jews and people of color.
“This is how it starts and then it goes on,” said Youssef Elkouch, a 31-year-old screenwriter, as he attended a rally against the far right in Paris on Thursday evening.
“The only coherence in the National Rally program is attacking Muslims or immigrants. I am French, but I don’t think that matters to the people who vote for them,” he said.
Macron dissolved the House of Commons and called early elections in the hope of boosting support for his government after the government’s humiliating defeat in the European Parliament vote on June 9. His gamble led to an unexpected redrawing of the French political map, even before French voters abroad could cast their votes online this week.
If it backfires and ushers in France’s first far-right government since the Nazi occupation of the country in World War II, Macron risks being remembered for one of Europe’s most earth-shattering political decisions and a misinterpretation of the mood of a country since David Cameron caused Brexit. voted Prime Minister of Great Britain in 2016. That led to the French neighboring country leaving the EU in 2020 after a messy divorce.
On the left of French politics, Macron’s decision has united previously divided parties in a new coalition. This coalition is backing promises of massive government spending that opponents say would be disastrous for France’s economy, jobs and debt. EU watchdogs have already criticized the promises.
On the far right, the Rassemblement National has been strengthened by renegades from the traditional right that disintegrated in the campaign. It could also attract voters from far-right parties. The victory on July 7 would be the culmination of a years-long effort by Le Pen to make the party, formerly known as the National Front, more attractive to mainstream voters. She inherited it from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted several times for anti-Semitic and racist hate speech, which eventually led her to sideline him.
At the center, Macron and his candidates have argued vehemently that the left-right blocs are both extreme and dangerous, hoping to revive the momentum that got him elected president in 2017 and 2022. But it worked less well in the last legislative period. elections that followed his re-election, leaving his government without an absolute majority and weakened in the National Assembly.
___
Leicester reported from Le Pecq. Associated Press journalist Oleg Cetinic in Paris contributed to this report.
