President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called for early elections on Sunday, throwing French politics into chaos.
The surprising move comes after his party suffered a blow from the far right in the European Parliament elections. Macron dissolved the French lower house of parliament and said the first round of legislative elections would be held on June 30.
France now finds itself in an unpredictable situation, with the future of Macron’s second term potentially in jeopardy. With less than a month to go before the vote, parties are now scrambling to find candidates, refine their messages and, in some cases, form alliances.
Here’s what you need to know about early elections.
What happened?
France’s far-right anti-immigration National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen and her popular protégé Jordan Bardera, surged to first place in Sunday’s European Parliament elections with about 31.4% of the vote. Macron’s centrist Ennahda party came in second with 14.6% of the vote, far behind other parties.
Macron acknowledged the defeat in a nationally televised broadcast that night.
“France needs an absolute majority to move forward in calm and harmony,” Mr Macron said, explaining his decision to call legislative elections.
That included taking the extremely rare step of dissolving the 577-seat National Assembly, a prerogative of the French president. Mr Macron is the first president since 1997 to do so.
Why did he do this?
When Mr Macron was re-elected in 2022, his party failed to win an outright majority. His centrist coalition has since governed with a slim majority but has struggled to pass some bills without opposition support.
Mr Macron is under no obligation to dissolve parliament, even if the European vote leaves him outnumbered with three years left in his presidential term. Analysts are still parsing his motives, though many suspect he believes disbandment is inevitable — conservative lawmakers have threatened to overthrow his administration in the fall. Shocking the country by calling sudden elections could also be a way for Macron to prevent his opposition from organizing and leave voters with a stark choice between him and the far right.
The move is seen as a gamble: If the national rally goes down the wrong way in national elections, France could become virtually ungovernable and Macron would face a parliament hostile to everything he believes in.
Ms Le Pen welcomed the announcement of the election and said she was confident her party could secure a majority. “We are ready to turn this country around,” she told cheering supporters in Paris on Sunday night.
What’s the danger?
The presidency is the most powerful political office in France, with extensive powers to govern by decree. But most major domestic policy changes and key legislation, such as spending bills or constitutional amendments, require parliamentary approval, particularly the National Assembly.
Unlike the Senate, the other house of the French parliament, the National Assembly is directly elected by the people and can overthrow the French cabinet through a vote of no confidence. It also has more leeway to legislate and challenge the executive branch, often getting the final say if the two chambers disagree on a bill.
Macron’s party and its centrist allies currently have 250 seats in the National Assembly, below the 289 needed for an absolute majority. The National Rally Party has 88 seats, while the mainstream conservative Republicans have 61 seats. The rest is held by smaller groups or lawmakers not affiliated with any political party.
How will voting be conducted?
The election for the 577 seats in Congress will be held in two rounds, with the first round on June 30 and the second round on July 7.
France has 577 constituencies, each with one seat, covering the mainland, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. Unlike many of its European neighbors, France awards seats to the candidate who receives the most votes in each constituency rather than based on a proportion of the total national vote.
That means there will be 577 separate contests, each with its own local dynamics and quirks, unlike the European Parliament elections, where parties field a single national list of candidates.
Each constituency can have any number of candidates in the first round, but there are specific thresholds to advance to the second round. While in most cases the runoff will be contested by the two candidates with the most votes, in rare cases there may be three or even four candidates. Whoever gets the most votes in the runoff wins the race. (In some cases, the candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round wins outright.)
What happens next?
Since the election has just been announced, there are no reliable polls yet.
Despite its victory in the European elections, it is unclear whether the National Rally will gain more seats in France’s lower house of parliament.
“It is difficult to project the results of the European elections onto legislative elections,” said Luc Rouban, a senior researcher at the Center for Political Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. “Not sure if national rallies would have the same success.”
With little time left in the campaign, left-wing parties are scrambling to unite and avoid competing candidates in every constituency, as they will in 2022. But unity on the French left may be elusive, and it is unclear whether the parties can reach such a deal.
If Macron fails to secure a strong majority in parliament, he may find himself in a rare “cohabitation” situation, with the president and the National Assembly on opposing political sides.
In this scenario, Macron would be forced to choose a prime minister from a different party — potentially hampering much of his domestic agenda. Foreign policy is the prerogative of the president and in theory remains largely unaffected.
