Emmanuel Macron has laid a trap for the hard-Right by calling a surprise parliamentary election, Elysee sources said.
Government officials suggested Mr Macron was allowing Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) to win control of the French parliament to expose her incompetence ahead of a presidential election.
Emmanuel Pellerin, of Mr Macron’s Renaissance party, added: “Everything points to the [hard-Right RN] winning a relative or absolute majority. But that forces the French to think about what is at stake.”
However, one MP from Mr Macron’s party said “we’re still in shock” over the snap election call.
An Élysée source told Reuters that the 46-year-old French president, whose power has been curtailed since he lost his absolute majority in parliament two years ago, calculated that there was a chance he could claw back a majority, taking everyone by surprise – including many in his own camp.
But even if this fails and the RN secures a parliamentary majority, his gamble is that three years of populism would unmask her party’s incompetence to voters and undermine her bid for the presidency in 2027, said the source.
Her party has already let it be known that Jordan Bardella, 28, who ran RN’s European election campaign and won 31.5 per cent of the vote – more than twice that of Macron’s party – would become prime minister should the party secure a majority next month.
“I knew this option was on the table, but when it becomes reality it’s something else ... I didn’t sleep last night,” said the source.
President Macron said on Monday that he was “confident” the French would “make the right choice for themselves and for future generations”.
His surprise move came after mainstream centrist parties kept an overall majority in the European Parliament in Sunday’s elections, but the hard-Right also notched up a string of high-profile victories in Italy and Austria.
It came second in the Netherlands and Germany, where the three governing coalition parties also tanked. However, centre-Left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesman ruled out a snap vote in Germany.
Some commentators are calling Mr Macron’s move rash or even political suicide prompted by hubris and a sense of “après moi, le déluge”.
The prospect that France will have a populist Right-wing prime minister when it stages the Olympics this summer is now real. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, a Socialist, described the prospect of elections just weeks before the start of the Paris Games as “extremely unsettling”.
“By playing with fire, the head of state could end up … burning himself and dragging the entire country into the fire,” Le Monde wrote in an editorial.
But Mr Macron appeared unfazed as he visited the site of a Second World War massacre by Nazi soldiers together with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president.
Mr Steinmeier said: “Let us never forget the damage done in Europe by nationalism and hate.”
Back in Paris, even some allies expressed shock and dissent.
Lower house speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, a senior figure within Macron’s party, indicated that forming a coalition with other parties could have been a better “path”.
“The president believed that this path did not exist,” she told television channel France 2.
Even Gabriel Attal,his loyal prime minister, who was kept in the dark until the last minute, tried to talk him out of it, tendering his own resignation.
“Use me as the fuse,” he reportedly urged his 46-year-old boss, offering himself as a sacrificial lamb following the heavy defeat.
Mr Macron reportedly declined and told the popular 35-year-old that he was “the best person” to front the legislative campaign against the equally popular Mr Bardella.
“It is better to write history than to endure it,” he reportedly told the stunned cabinet. No one dared to contradict him.
A poll discreetly conducted by the conservative Republicans party late last year suggested Rassemblement National (RN) would win the most seats in parliament – between 243 and 305, compared with 89 at present. It would require 289 seats for a majority.
The Kremlin, which hopes the far Right will take a softer line on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, said it was “attentively observing” the gains across Europe.
Despite these, Ursula von der Leyen, 65, the European Commission president,insisted that “the centre held” overall in the elections that saw her centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP) strengthen its grip on first place in the European Parliament.
“There is still a majority for a strong Europe in the middle of the political spectrum,” said Ms von der Leyen, who hopes to secure a second term, adding: “Together we will form a bastion against the extremes of the Left and the Right.”
A US official said it did not expect any major foreign policy changes from the EU, including on Ukraine, after the vote.
