France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has said he intends to dissolve parliament and call snap legislative elections in the wake of his allies’ crushing defeat to the far right National Rally (RN) in Sunday’s European parliament elections.
According to usually reliable projections, Macron’s centrist list was on course to score between 14.8% and 15.2% of the vote, less than half of RN’s tally of 31.5%-33% – the party’s highest ever in a nationwide election – and only just ahead of the Socialist list on 14%.
“At the end of this day, therefore, I will not be able to act as if nothing has happened,” Macron said in a televised address on Sunday. “That is why … I have decided to give you the choice of our parliamentary future again, by voting.”
The French president, whose second term had more than two years to run before elections due in 2027, said he would shortly sign a decree calling the elections, and that the first round would be held on 30 June and the second on 7 July.
“France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony. To be French, at heart, it is about choosing to write history, not be driven by it,” Macron said.
The head of the RN’s list, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, had earlier said French voters had clearly “expressed a desire for change” and called for snap legislative elections.
Macron was “a weakened president”, Bardella told the far-right party’s supporters at a victory party in the Bois de Vincennes, east of Paris, saying the “unprecedented gap” in the two scores reflected “a stinging disavowal and rejection of the president and his government”.
Marine Le Pen, the veteran far-right leader, said: “We are ready to take power if the French people have confidence in us in these forthcoming legislative elections. We are ready to put the country back on its feet. We are ready to defend the interests of the French people. We are ready to put an end to mass immigration.”
Analysts had predicted that Macron, whose centrist alliance does not have a majority in the lower house and has had to push legislation through without a vote using a controversial constitutional tool, could be in trouble after the European elections.
Weakened by such a heavy defeat, the centrist president was likely to face repeated censure motions probably leading to an eventual government collapse, experts have warned – a scenario the embattled president is clearly seeking to avoid. However observers warned that he was taking a gamble.
Raphael Glucksmann, who ran on in the European elections on a combined ticket for his European group, Place Publique, and the Socialist party, said Macron had “given in” to Bardella. “This is a very dangerous game to play with democracy and the institutions. I am flabbergasted,” he said.
Another critic, Valérie Pécresse, a senior figure in the conservative Les Républicains, said: “Dissolving without giving anyone time to organise and without any campaign is playing Russian roulette with the country’s destiny.”
The RN was far from the only far-right party to be celebrating gains on Sunday night. Exit polls indicated that the hard-right populists had also expanded their share of the vote in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Although the centre-right alliance appeared to have taken a decisive lead in Germany, exit polls indicated the far-right Alternative für Deutschland had made significant gains, while the governing Greens and Social Democrats had slumped.
The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, now in opposition, was on course for 29.5% of the vote, while the AfD had jumped to 16.5% from 11% in 2019. The AfD’s success comes despite a slew of scandals, including its lead candidate saying that the SS, the Nazi’s main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”.
The parties of Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition were on course for a disastrous night, as the Social Democrats slid to 14%, worse than its weakest ever result in 2019, according to the exit poll. The Greens, who came second in 2019 with 20.5%, were knocked down to fourth place with 12 %-12.5%.
Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets in cities including Berlin, Dresden and Munich to protest against rightwing extremism on Sunday, the final day of European elections in 21 countries.
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In Austria, meanwhile, the far-right Freedom party was forecast to have come top, with a projected 27%, ahead of the conservative People’s party and the Social Democrats, on 23.5% and 23% respectively.
In the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ far-right party was running a close second behind a Left-Green alliance. The Freedom party looked set to win 17.7% of the vote, while the Left-Green alliance, led by the former EU Commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, was on 21.6%.
On Sunday, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who leads a stridently nationalist and anti-immigrant government, told reporters after casting his ballot: “Right is good. To go right is always good. Go right!”
However, the picture was not all dismal for centrists. According to an initial projection from the European parliament, MEPs from the four pro-European mainstream groups were forecast to retain a majority of seats in the assembly, but a smaller one than in 2019, which will make it increasingly difficult for them to pass laws.
The European People’s party, Socialists and Democrats, the centrist Renew group and the Greens were on course for 451 of the 720 seats, a 62.6% share, compared with their 69.2% share in the slightly smaller outgoing parliament. These groups often find themselves on opposing sides; the Greens, for example, did not support Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president in 2019.
However, the narrowing overall majorities for mainstream pro-European parties could endanger the passing of ambitious laws on climate action. It is also likely to complicate Von der Leyen’s hopes of winning a second term as European Commission president, as she needs to win the support of at least 361 of the new members of parliament.
In a tweet after the exit poll, Von der Leyen said she was happy about the “excellent results” for her CDU/CSU alliance. “We had the right topics. The voters have confirmed this.”
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch MEP who is one of the two lead candidates for the Greens, said he was disappointed with the projected result in Germany “In 2019, we had 10%. We knew we would not reach that. I think if we are around 7% or 8%, that would still be a pretty good result for us, I would say,” he told reporters.
Voters in most EU countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, were called to the polls on Sunday, the culmination of a four-day electoral exercise that began last Thursday in the Netherlands.
In the first election since Britain left the EU, an estimated 361 million Europeans had the chance to vote. That included 16-year olds in Belgium and Germany for the first time, who joined counterparts in Austria and Malta and 17-year-olds in Greece.