Image source, Dimitar Dilkov/POOL/AFP
- author, Paul Kirby
- role, BBC News, Paris
France’s lightning-fast election campaign is over and voters appear ready to hand the National Union party a historic victory in the parliamentary elections, despite final pleas not to back the far right.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warned that the attack would unleash “an impulse of hatred and aggression.”
But the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old likely to become the next prime minister, appears to have consolidated its lead in the opinion polls.
The National Coalition has fended off a series of accusations of racism, not just from party members but also from supporters. The big question now is whether it can secure an absolute majority in the two rounds of voting over the next two Sundays.
They have a great chance after the European Parliament elections on June 9 painted most of France’s electoral map deep blue. That’s when Emmanuel Macron surprised the French public by deciding to call general elections in just three weeks.
The National Rally (RN) is gearing up for Sunday night with a poll showing it was on 36.5% support just hours before the end of the campaign.
The party’s candidates hope to win more than 50 percent of the vote tonight and win dozens of seats in the National Assembly, but most of the seats will be decided in a runoff election between two, three or four candidates on July 7.
So the polls don’t tell the whole story, and the New Popular Front, a hastily formed left-wing coalition, is also aiming for victory with 29%, just a few points behind the RN.
The Ensemble coalition, led by Gabriel Attal, is in third place with 20.5 percent in an Ifop poll. Attal argues that the other two main blocs are extreme.
The region in mainland France that most supported the Rally National in the European vote was the rural northern department of Reine, where support was just over 50%.
From 2022 onwards, the Reine department will already have three National Union councillors, and in the historic town of Villers-Cotterets, Franck Briffaut has been the National Union’s mayor for 10 years.
A party member for more than 40 years, dating back to the National Front’s days under Jean-Marie Le Pen, he feels his path to power was inevitable, just like Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy’s elections.
But like many in his party, he will be satisfied with nothing less than an absolute majority in the National Assembly, which would require at least 289 of the 577 seats.
“I will not take part because this is a trap set by Macron and I am convinced that if we win an absolute majority he will be removed from office. As long as he is there we cannot implement all our policies because we need constitutional reform.”
Macron has pledged not to go anywhere until his term ends in 2027, and it will be his task to appoint the next prime minister after a second round of elections on July 7.
Jordan Bardella, who has “Prime Minister” written under his name on his election posters, is adamant that he will not settle for anything less than an absolute majority.
The question remains as to who Macron will choose if the RN does not secure a majority. “It would make no sense for Emmanuel Macron to nominate someone as prime minister that nobody wants,” said constitutional law professor Dominique Rousseau. But without an absolute majority, he said, the president has some room to maneuver.
Typically that would come from the largest party, but if they refuse, they will instead look for a consensus figure who can bring together the rest of the centre-right and centre-left.
For now, Jordan Bardella is going all out, announcing in a televised debate two days ago that some sort of “national unity government” is in the wings.
Bardella promised a government with all the talents, including a yet-to-be-known “honest patriot who cherishes French sovereignty at heart.” But he named former Conservative leader Eric Ciotti, who alienated most of his colleagues when he formed a coalition with the RN.
That may not be convincing, and the prospect of power-sharing or “coexistence” with Macron seems like an extremely difficult three years for French politics.
Rally National leader Marine Le Pen has already raised tensions by questioning whether the president’s role as commander in chief of the armed forces is merely an “honorary position”.
The intensity and importance of the campaign has led Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin to warn of the risk that “the far left and the far right” could try to sow chaos after the second round of voting. He has urged regional governors to be vigilant.
Away from the hustle and bustle of Paris’s intense politics, Green party campaigners handed out leaflets to a few passersby in the northern town of Soissons, which has been governed by National Rally lawmakers for the past two years.
He complained that since he took office, the RN had done nothing for the old and now disadvantaged town.
Despite Marine Le Pen’s efforts to renew the party’s image and shed its old image of racism and anti-Semitism, people still refer to it as the National Front in major shopping districts.
Jonathan says that while the RN is no different to its predecessor, there is no need to worry too much: “There are restrictions in place in parliament and in the constitution, so we’re not starting a dictatorship here.”
One mother, who lives as a black family in a nearby village, said she was worried about the extremely high vote share for RN: “It’s extremely high. We didn’t expect RN to get the most votes in Reine.”
She also believes the far-right would have a hard time amending the constitution, but her concerns are more about their rhetoric.
One of the RN’s main policies is “nation first,” which limits social welfare to French citizens as well as reducing energy taxes and exempting people under 30 from income tax.
The party also said dozens of highly sensitive and strategic jobs would be denied to dual nationals, who make up around 5 percent of France’s population.
Image source, Samir Al Doumi/AFP
One of the outgoing lawmakers suggested the appointment of Moroccan-born former education minister Najat Vallaud Belkacem had been a “mistake.”
Marine Le Pen quickly defeated him, but it is clear that the problems facing France’s 3.3 million citizens with dual nationality are not going away.
“We are not very supportive of dual nationals,” Ville-Cotrets mayor Franck Briffaut told the BBC, stressing that it was his personal view.
“It’s the same as bigamy. We are in a civilised country where bigamy is not tolerated. Dual citizenship is not allowed. You belong to one or the other. You cannot love two countries, just like you cannot be married to two women.”
