go through Paul Bryant, BBC News, Paris
Andrei Ivanov/AFP France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday could make history, with the far right closer to power than at any time in modern history.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardera’s National Rally (RN) are well ahead in the polls – three weeks after they won the European elections and President Emmanuel Macron called for a national vote.
More than 2.6 million of France’s 49 million voters have registered to vote by proxy, indicating a high turnout is expected for such a critical election.
It’s a two-round election, with most of the 577 seats in Congress not decided until next Sunday’s runoff.
The campaign, which lasted only 20 days, also benefited the RN, which quickly refined its existing commitments on immigration, insecurity and tax cuts to tackle the cost of living crisis.
Jordan Bardella hopes to become RN’s first prime minister, with his party confident of winning dozens of constituencies outright in the first round.
But he said he would only take over the post if the party secured an absolute majority in the 289-seat parliament. The alternative would be a hung parliament and gridlock.
Once the first results are announced on Sunday evening, rivals gathered across the country will have to decide who to support in runoff battles across France to ensure there is no outright majority.
Thomas Samson/Pool/AFP If the polls are correct, many runoffs will pit the national assembly against a hastily assembled left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front, which believes it can even win the election.
Voters scoffed at previous elections when political parties banded together to exclude the far right.
But RN’s leaders have struggled for years to shed their extremist image. As well as giving French citizens “state preferences” for employment and housing, they also want to cut energy value-added tax and allow young people under 30 to evade income tax.
In Franconville, north of Paris, a teacher named Agnès complains about the breakdown of discipline in French schools and likes Jordan Bardera’s plans for an “explosion of authority” in education. “I either vote right or I vote far right. I like the charm of Badla,” she said.
She also has no problem with RN’s abolition plan birthrightchildren born to foreign parents are automatically entitled to French citizenship if they have lived in France for five years – from the age of 11 to 18, they have the right to apply for French citizenship.
President Macron’s overall coalition is widely expected to lose seats, while Gabriel Attal’s days as prime minister appear to be numbered, although polls show he remains France’s most popular politician.
“The Macron era is over,” Francois Hollande declared before the vote.
Hollande, the former French president and Macron’s boss and mentor, is running for Congress again and is now the candidate of the New Popular Front.
Yet even Macron’s allies are angry about his hasty electoral gamble.
France won’t hold another election for three years, and it has better ways to spend the summer than going through a brief but intense campaign.
The national football team will face Belgium in the last 16 of Euro 2024 on Monday, as France prepares for the Paris Olympics, which starts on July 26.
Metro stations such as Place de la Concorde were closed and restrictions were in place near all Olympic venues.
The police and army are already stretched thin and the interior minister warned of the potential for violence after the second round.
Mr Macron is due to meet with the prime minister and other members of the government on Monday to decide next steps.
So far their motto is “you you” -Neither the retreating RN nor the left-wing New Popular Front, due to the involvement of the French Indomitus Front (LFI), a group denounced as far-left by its opponents and some of its members accused of anti-Semitism.
President Macron said only his overall coalition would be able to stop “the far right and the far left”. He said the far right categorizes people based on religion or origin, while the left judges them based on the community to which they belong.
On a hot night in Meaux, east of Paris, last week, Mathilde Panot, one of the LFI’s most senior figures, told supporters they were the “only focus of resistance” to the rise of the far right, blaming Macron’s alliance Opened the door to RN’s power.
“We are not extreme, what is extreme is that Mr. Macron’s extreme liberalism has led to the rise of the far right,” she told the BBC.
The New Popular Front also includes more moderate parties, including the Socialists and the Greens, and its leader Marine Tondellier has called for a unified stance to prevent Bardera from becoming prime minister.
Some of France’s biggest young stars are urging voters to avoid extremes, from NBA star Victor Wembanyama and soccer captain Kylian Mbappé to YouTube star Squeezie.
But the divisions between the two parties run deep and there is very little time for concerted action to stop RN.
“I’m worried for our country,” said Aurelly outside a market in Le Plessy Bouchard, north of Paris. She was unimpressed with the RN’s nationalist policies. “Patriotism is not nationalism, they are different.”
