Macron takes huge risk with surprise election

President Emmanuel Macron has called mid-term parliamentary polls later this month in the wake of a big victory for his rival Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament vote.

The far-right party is on course to win 32% of the vote, reveal exit polls, more than twice that of the president’s Renaissance party.

Announcing the dissolution of Parliament, he said the two rounds of voting would take place on 30 June and 7 July, a few weeks before the Paris Olympics.

Mr Macron made the dramatic and surprise decision in a televised address from the Élysée Palace an hour after voting closed and exit polls had been declared in France’s EU elections.

The announcement not long after National Rally’s 28-year-old leader, Jordan Bardella, had openly called on the president to call parliamentary elections.

“I have heard your message,” the president told French voters, “and I will not let it go without a response.”

“France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony,” he said, adding that he could not resign himself to the far-right’s progress “everywhere in the continent”.

Now barely two years into his second term as president, Macron already lacks a majority in the French parliament, and though this European vote in theory has no bearing on national politics, he clearly decided that continuing his mandate without a new popular consultation would place too much of a strain on the system.

The upcoming parliamentary polls also won’t affect Macron’s own job, as they are separate from the presidential elections and his term as president still runs for three more years.

Ms Le Pen, who has twice been defeated by Mr Macron in presidential elections, immediately reacted, saying her party was “ready to exercise power, ready to put an end to mass immigration”.

Calling a snap poll is a big surprise for the country, and a huge risk for President Macron.

He could have reacted differently. He could have just kept going, explaining the far right’s massive victory as a European aberration which would be corrected at more important elections.

He could have trusted to the impending European football championship in Germany and above all the Paris Olympics to keep people’s minds off politics for a couple of months. That was certainly how the Paris commentariat thought he would take his party’s rout. But one can only assume the president had seen this coming, and planned his response in advance.