Opinion surveys had predicted it: the results of the European elections in France were marked by a spectacular rise in the far-right, with a cumulative score of around 39%. What they had not predicted was President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to look at these disastrous results and call a snap general election.
If he succeeds in facing down the far-right, Macron will be hailed as an audacious political operator navigating the country between the risks of extremism and political deadlock. Failure will almost certainly produce a becalmed France, unable to address its serious domestic problems and badly damage its newfound role as Ukraine’s supporter-in-chief and bulwark against re-emergent Russian imperialism. The stakes are therefore extremely high.
The main far-right party, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally), whose list was led by Jordan Bardella, won 31.3%. The total for all anti-system parties was around 52% when the far-left was included. The list led by the presidential majority candidate reached 14.6%, just behind the left-wing list led by Raphaël Glucksmann. The conservative right won 7.25% and the ecologists 5.5%, outstripped by the far-left with 9.9% of the vote.
In reality, this development is simply a continuation of the almost constant rise of the far-right in the country since 1984, and whose candidate qualified for the second round of the presidential elections in 2002, 2017, and 2022. Remember that in the first round of the last presidential election, anti-system parties took 58% of the vote.
While the far-right has made headway in several European Union (EU) countries and is on the decline in others, France is characterized by a record extremist vote that bears witness to a kind of national disease. It simply served to confirm the widespread belief that despite her failed attempts in 2017 and 2022, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen could win the next presidential election scheduled for 2027.
It was against this backdrop, characterized by a resounding defeat in the European elections, that President Emmanuel Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly and call early elections to be held on June 30 and July 7.
This decision seems to have been taken by a small group of people close to the president, excluding the prime minister, the main ministers and the President of the National Assembly. They made no secret, either directly or unofficially, of their opposition. The president was under no obligation to do so, even if he feared that the lack of an absolute majority in the Assembly would make it difficult to pass the budget for 2025 and certain other bills.
This decision comes at the worst possible time. On a national level, Emmanuel Macron is facing massive rejection and hate campaigns on social networks, particularly from the extremes, and sometimes amplified by Russian propaganda networks.
For several months, polls have indicated that the far-right could win between 250 and 300 deputies — the absolute majority in the Assembly is 289. It is now present in all regions of France, except some cities like Paris, and in all age groups, first and foremost the young — which is nothing new — but also pensioners, and in all social categories.
The traditional parties, both right and left, are weakened and divided, and the far left has been playing the strategy of chaos for several years, behaving like Le Pen’s best ally.
Internationally, this dissolution comes at a time when the French President has considerably strengthened his position in support of Ukraine following his meeting with President Zelenskyy three days before the election and has resumed his role as a driving force in Europe for new initiatives.
A victory for the far-right, which is largely complacent towards Russia even if some deny it, and which has refused all measures of support for Kyiv in both the National Assembly and the European Parliament, could jeopardize this progress, even though the President has a prominent role in foreign and defense policy.
The Rassemblement National could, in fact, block aid budgets for Ukraine. That worry reportedly caused some considerable anger in Brussels, where officials had been working with Paris to fashion huge new financial support for Ukraine. All the government’s recent real, albeit insufficient, efforts to counter foreign interference, from both Russia and China, could also be called into question.
The impression may have been created that the president’s decision did not take into account the context of Russia’s all-out war which outcome will shape the face of Europe and the world in the decades to come.
The game is therefore more than risky and, as the majority of the French and international media have pointed out, its outcome will weigh heavily on Macron’s legacy. If he wins his bet, we’ll certainly salute this new risk-taking; if he loses, he’ll be remembered as the man who brought the far-right into government.
The campaign indicates that far-right voters are simply indifferent to the bigger picture. Instead, they are driven by resentment against the so-called “elites”, sometimes hatred, anxiety about loss of wealth and status, and what they imagine to be a “migratory invasion” or fear of Islam.
All the arguments that rightly invoke the true nature of the far-right, its links with the Kremlin, its racism or its incompetence, no longer work. No political party, left or right, has ever succeeded in making it recede.
Everyone was able to point out that, recently, the debate between Jordan Bardella and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, had clearly shown the far-right leader’s unpreparedness and fragility, but this had no effect on the vote. — just as the debates during the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, did not necessarily have a decisive effect either, even though ultimately the prospect of a far-right president mobilized the electorate.
Since then, however, the far-right has made further progress. It has become a normal party in many people’s minds. Some commentators have pointed out that Donald Trump’s incompetence is no longer a strong argument in the United States, any more than the entirely foreseeable disaster of Brexit was in the United Kingdom.
Some have also argued that if the far-right were to win a majority and thus the post of prime minister, its incompetence would dissuade voters from electing a far-right president in 2027. This is by no means self-evident, all the more so as it could not be felt immediately and, above all, as the voters’ motivations, primarily ideological, are quite different.
The idea of “purging” the temptation of the far-right by giving it power is all the more high-risk given that history shows that when it takes office, sometimes democratically, it progressively suppresses essential freedoms once it gets there and that, more often than not, it is difficult to get it to leave power once it has taken it. It is far from certain that French institutions (like the courts, the police, and the civil service) would pass the stress test.
What’s more, the far-right has a long tradition of complacency, or worse, with Putin’s Russia. Some of its elected representatives even went to extremes in 2014 by supporting the Russian regime. In any case, the far-right would do anything to stop aid to Ukraine and, in particular, the delivery of Mirage 2000-5s announced by President Macron this month and the dispatch of military instructors.
As was the case during previous cohabitations in France (1986-1998, 1993-1995, and 1997-2002) between a president and a prime minister belonging to opposing political camps, the French head of state would come flanked by his head of government to major international meetings and, in particular, European Councils.
France’s image would undoubtedly be seriously damaged. It is not certain that foreign intelligence services would still share sensitive information with Paris. Financial markets have already reacted strongly to the announcement of the results and might suffer even further if a far-right premier came to power.
France’s already high level of debt would become increasingly burdensome as borrowing rates rose. The economic and financial crisis would be of considerable proportions. This would be all the more the case as, in an attempt to win the 2027 presidential election, a far-right government would be tempted to hand out gifts to various sections of the electorate.
Three scenarios therefore seem possible.
- The first is a far-right majority in the National Assembly as a result of the legislative elections. For most bills, it could constitutionally override the opposition of the Senate, even if provisions deemed freedom-hostile were censured by the Constitutional Council. We can also expect it to launch campaigns against the constitutional court. If Marine Le Pen’s party were subsequently to win the presidential election, some institutions might be in jeopardy, along with the freedoms on which the rule of law is founded.
- The second possibility is a sharp rise in the number of extreme right-wing members without an absolute majority in the National Assembly. Parliament would then be unmanageable due to the major divisions in the opposition, in particular with a strong minority of the far-left tempted to play, as it has already tried to do, a policy of systematic obstruction. Part of the conservative right, as is already apparent, would also be tempted to rally to the extreme right.
- The third scenario — the best plausible outcome — is of moderate elements of the realistic left, the center, and the classic conservative right coming together to form a coalition government, in a form resembling an enlarged German-style Große Koalition. However, this would presuppose that these parties together managed to win the necessary 289 seats — something that is not yet a foregone conclusion. In the absence of this outcome, a bleak prospect opens up — that France becomes the continent’s inward-looking sick man just when Europe needs her to be outward-looking and engaged.
Nicolas Tenzer, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, is a visiting professor at Sciences Po Paris and writes the international politics blog Tenzer Strategics. His latest book on Russia’s war against Ukraine, Notre Guerre. Le Crime et l’Oubli : pour une pensée stratégique (Our War. Crime and Oblivion: Re-framing Strategics Thinking) was published on January 10, 2024 by Éditions de l’Observatoire. It is due to be translated into several languages.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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