In Sunday’s European Parliament elections, Le Pen’s populist nationalists won twice as many votes as Emmanuel Macron’s globalist centrist ruling bloc, forcing him to immediately dissolve Parliament and call new French elections in order to regain power for the remainder of his presidency.
Updated 2215 BST: Le Pen speaks
Shortly after President Macron announced he would call fresh elections to bolster his position, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (RN) party, took to the stage at the party’s eve-of-election party in Paris and declared she was ready to call early general elections.
Le Pen hailed the success of right-wing parties across Europe as “the dawn of a new era for all European countries and peoples”, expressed hope that the election result would finally bring to a complete end “the painful globalist era that has caused suffering to the peoples of the world”, and said it also reaffirmed the RN as “a great force for change in France”.
She said at a rally in Paris:
Ladies and gentlemen, my dear compatriots, the French people have spoken out and this historic election shows that when the people vote, the people win…
…The President … has announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and will send the people back to the polls within a few weeks. I can only welcome this, and we are ready for it…If the French people place their trust in us in new national elections, we are ready to use our power. We are ready to rebuild the country to defend the interests of the French people. We are ready to put an end to mass immigration. [build the strength of the economy] As a priority, we are ready to start reindustrializing the country. To be clear, we are ready to rebuild our country, we are ready to make France vibrant again.
As attention Le Monde The RN’s 31.5% of the vote means that Le Pen and Bardella achieved the best result for a French party in a European election in the past 40 years – and that’s before taking into account the fact that the right-wing populist vote was split to some extent by the election of a rival party co-chaired by Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who won a further 5.5% of the vote.
Marine Le Pen (L), leader of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party, addresses activists as party president Jordan Bardella listens, during a rally on the final night of the 2024 European Parliament elections at the Chaine du Roy pavilion in Paris on June 9, 2024, after the French president announced new general elections will be held on June 30. (Photo by Julien De Rosa/AFP) (Photo by Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)
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Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party is on track to become the largest single party in the European Union after a strong showing in Sunday’s European Parliament elections. Voting across the European Union to choose the next parliament began Thursday and ended Sunday evening, with exit polls showing the right-wing party performing well but perhaps not quite as well as the continent-wide landslide victory some opinion polls had suggested.
But there were big differences between countries, with France perhaps the most notable of the results: President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, Union for Europe, came in a distant second in the Ipsos exit poll by just 1 percentage point, well behind the leader RN. Le Pen’s RN, led by her fellow party member and MEP Jordan Bardella, won 31.5% of the vote, more than double Renaissance’s 14.7%.
Exit polls predict the RN will win 30 seats in the European Parliament, while Macron is expected to win 14. This is a big figure, and assuming the exit polls are broadly correct across Europe, it would make Le Pen’s RN the largest single party in the European Parliament.
This strong blow to Macron’s authority provoked an immediate reaction on Sunday night, when he announced he would dissolve Parliament and call a general election at the end of this month. If he wins the vote, Macron can claim a strong public mandate to continue governing as president for the remainder of the term. But if he doesn’t receive that support, he will have to rule as a lame duck until April 2027, at best.
It’s a big gamble, but Macron will have to hope that the French people will treat a crucial parliamentary election differently from the faraway, less important European Parliament elections held in Brussels. This effect was well demonstrated when Britain was still in the European Union, when Nigel Farage’s eurosceptic UKIP and subsequent pro-Brexit parties attracted large votes in Brussels but struggled to gain a foothold in Westminster.
But with Le Pen’s RN on a roll and just 21 days until the first round of the general election, which will be announced tonight, it may be hard for Macron to turn things around. But he is already making a good try. Reports French Newspapers Figaro The president broke the news in a speech on Sunday night, saying: “I have decided to once again give you a choice, by vote, about the future of Congress… [this is a] “This is an important and weighty decision, but above all it is an act of trust,” he said, adding, “I want to allow the people, as sovereigns, to have their say.”
The President of the Republic announced the dissolution of the National Assembly several weeks ago. Us and friends.
As a French person, and former RN leader, you will be joining one of the only services to lead us to France. pic.twitter.com/o08IMlowk8
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) June 9, 2024
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