Following a significant win for his opponent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament election, President Emmanuel Macron has announced the holding of early legislative elections later this month.
According to exit surveys, the far-right party is expected to receive 32% of the vote, which is more than twice as many as the president’s Renaissance party.
He declared that the two voting rounds would occur on June 30 and July 7, just a few weeks before the Paris Olympics, when he dissolved the legislature.
An hour after the polls in France’s EU elections had closed and exit polls had been announced, Mr. Macron made the shocking and dramatic choice in a broadcast speech from the Élysée Palace.
Shortly after Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old head of National Rally, publicly urged the president to call for legislative elections, he made his choice.
The president informed the electorate in France, “I have heard your message, and I will not let it go without a response.”
He declared, “France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony,” but he could not accept the far-right’s development “everywhere in the continent.”
Barely two years into his second term as president, Mr. Macron already lacks a majority in the French parliament. While this European vote theoretically has no impact on domestic politics, he made it evident that he believed the system would be too burdened to continue his mandate without a fresh public consultation.
