French President Emmanuel Macron, who calls himself an “incurable optimist,” called on Wednesday for all French people who “reject extremes” to vote for centrist parties in early elections and thus save the republic from far-right bigotry and far-left anti-Semitism.
Speaking a third of the way through a two-hour news conference, President Emmanuel Macron painted a grim picture of economic chaos, lawlessness and a society divided between “real French citizens and second-class citizens” if Marine Le Pen’s National Rally comes to power.
“I do not intend to hand over the keys of power to the far right in 2027,” Macron, who is term-limited, vowed, alluding to the next presidential election.
However, by dissolving the National Assembly and calling parliamentary elections in 18 days, Macron may have to hand over some power in 2024. The stakes are high that the National Rally, which won more than twice as many votes as Macron’s centrist coalition in Sunday’s European Parliament elections, will not repeat the same performance in domestic elections.
If, as current polls suggest, the National Rally emerges as the largest party in the June 30 and July 7 elections, Macron may have to appoint a prime minister from Le Pen’s party, most likely its chairman, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella.
Asked why he was going all in, Macron said a “clarification” was necessary, a word he used repeatedly. He insisted that it would be disrespectful of the will of the people if he ignored the fact that “50% of the French voted for extremists in the European elections” — meaning for the far right and far left parties.
“You’d say, ‘This guy is crazy!'” he said.
Yet that is what many French people have been saying over the past few days, with even members of his own party expressing frustration with a leader who made a ruling that was not subject to any constitutional requirement and has thrown the country into chaos on the eve of the Olympic Games, which open in Paris next month.
Macron said he would not resign under any circumstances, would not debate Le Pen, and would not campaign in person, saying that would be handled by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Of course, his statement of electoral priorities was itself clearly a campaign speech.
Asked repeatedly whether he would appoint Bardella as prime minister if the National Rally won, Macron rejected “fictional” speculation and instead adopted an attitude of resolute optimism that, for now, looks more like wishful thinking than based on fact.
Macron’s outreach to what’s left of France’s centrists seemed genuine, with expressions of “humility” and promises to govern differently. But that could not obscure the fact that he had effectively destroyed the center-right Republicans, which had been wavering since coming to power in 2017 over whether to form an electoral alliance with the National Rally and, to a lesser extent, the center-left Socialists.
He replaced them with a political party that was little more than his personal vehicle, representing the so-called “Macroni Party,” a group of centrists whose greatest common denominator was loyalty to the president.
Macron called on ecologists, socialists, social democrats, radicals and even the remnants of the Communist Party to unite before or after the election to chart a new path forward for France, which he said would require recognizing the widespread feelings of “dispossession, devaluation” among citizens in France’s rural areas and other places disconnected from the wired cities of the knowledge economy.
The problem is that Macron has made such promises before. At the outbreak of the “yellow vest” protests in 2018 and again after his reelection in 2022, he vowed to listen better and to maintain a new humility. There is little evidence that the other political currents he has ignored during his highly centralized and hierarchical presidency are ready to save him.
“We are not perfect,” Macron said, although he evaded personal responsibility for the European election fiasco by saying nationalist far-right movements were on the rise in many European countries.
The president’s accusation of anti-Semitism seemed certain to anger France Indomitable, the leftist party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which has been an ardent supporter of the Palestinians and a fierce critic of Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
Mélenchon accused former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, of expressing “foreign views” and accused Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Jewish speaker of the now-disbanded National Assembly, of “camping in Tel Aviv.”
Meanwhile, Le Pen, whose father Jean-Marie Le Pen is the founder of the Le Pen party and an outspoken anti-Semite, has been an outspoken defender of Israel and has argued that her party is now a natural home for the French Jewish community given its hostility to Muslim immigrants. Major Jewish organizations have so far resisted her calls.
In an apparent attempt to appeal to National Rally voters, Macron expressed his determination to take more “firm” and “authoritative measures” and lamented that steps already taken to increase police recruitment and reduce illegal immigration were “not fully seen, felt or understood by our fellow citizens”.
Macron talks a lot, as is his nature, and he became emotional several times when speaking about defending the Republic and core French values. He equated the National Rally’s rise to power with a disaster that would impoverish and collapse the country.
“What will happen to your pensions if the National Rally comes to power?” he asked. “What will happen to your property loans, as interest rates rise and the cost of your property loans soars?” Mr Macron continued, his voice rising: “What will happen to our values, to our fellow citizens from different countries who live in these projects?”
Macron saw a difference between the angry vote in the European Parliament elections and the upcoming legislative elections, saying reasonable French people would step back from the brink.
He ended his speech with a thunderous voice: “Refuse to fail. Accept the awakening and take a step for the Republic!”
