French President Emmanuel Macron has called early parliamentary elections following Marine Le Pen’s National Rally victory in the European Parliament vote.
It won 31.5% of the vote, more than double the share that went to Macron’s centrist party. The exit polls started pouring in as Macron delivered his ‘bombshell moment’ to the French people, the paper said BBC.
The ‘Parisian commentariat’ had thought he would dismiss the result as an ‘aberration’, the newspaper said BBCand trust that the coming Olympics and European football championships would divert attention from politics. But Macron said he could not pretend that nothing had happened Sky Newsand admitted that the EU elections were “not good” for his government.
The early elections are a “huge gamble,” he said Euro news. Macron has already lost his absolute majority in the national assembly after being re-elected two years ago.
LePen and National Rally president Jordan Bardella “sought to frame the EU elections as a midterm referendum on Mr Macron’s mandate, exploiting discontent over immigration, crime and a two-year inflation crisis,” according to The Telegraph.
If National Rally wins a majority, Macron will be “left like a lame duck” until his term ends in 2027.
The first round of elections for the National Assembly will take place on June 30 and the second on July 7, a few weeks before the Olympic Games in Paris.
Analysts told The guard that a National Rally majority was ‘unlikely’, partly because European elections are seen by voters as a ‘cheap way to boost the incumbent government’ and things ‘could very well turn out differently in local parliamentary elections’.
Macron is trying to “make the most of his weak position by regaining the initiative” and forcing the National Rally “into election mode faster than he would have liked.” But the ‘unexpected decision’ is a ‘roll of the dice’ for his political future.
