One week before the first round of legislative elections in France, the campaign is in full swing and is widely mobilizing: participation promises to be unprecedented for more than 20 years. If the far right is still given the victory by the polls, the left remains united and the presidential camp is losing ground.
Largely behind in the polls, the presidential camp is calling for a barrier to both the left and the far right. According to polls published on Sunday by various French media, his popularity is declining and barely one in five voters intend to cast a ballot for a Macronist candidate in the ballot box.
The National Rally (RN) would obtain up to 36% of the votes. It is ahead of the New Popular Front (27 to 29.5%), a broad left-wing alliance ranging from the social-democratic center-left (PS, EELV) to the far-left (NPA).
Strong mobilization expected
One week before this election, the French population seems mobilized as rarely in recent years for such an election. According to projections, participation could rise to 64%, a record since 2002.
That year, the elections came a month and a half after the shock of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s accession to the second round of the presidential election. Participation has not exceeded 60% since 2007. In 2022, it was even 47.5%.
Pensions and VAT “not priorities” for the RN
Before entering the second week of the campaign, RN president Jordan Bardella seeks to play the appeasement card and wants to unite the right. The past week has been marked by numerous renunciations, underlines La Tribune Dimanchewithout however affecting the determination of its voters.
The RN notably backtracked on the repeal of the pension reform, a promise hammered out during the European election campaign and on which it now adopts a more vague position, affirming that it is “not a priority”. He also renounced the removal of VAT on around a hundred essential products, now limiting itself to a reduction in VAT on energy and fuels.
“I want to be the Prime Minister of all French people, without any distinction,” said the far-right MEP. However, he affirmed that he would only accept the post if he obtained an absolute majority in the legislative elections.
A left in battle order
On the left, no leader has officially announced their wish to run for the post of Prime Minister. Main left-wing figure during the last two presidential elections, the leader of La France insoumise (LFI, radical left) Jean-Luc Mélenchon refused to “eliminate himself or impose himself” if the left won in the second round on July 7.
As for the common program, adopted in the wake of the European elections on June 9 and on which each political party made concessions, it has been hammered out on TV sets for a week by all the stakeholders in the alliance.
>> Also listen to the analysis of sociologist Michel Wievorka on the accusation of anti-Semitism against LFI:
The divisions and virulent attacks observed between the left-wing parties during the European election campaign therefore seem to have been put on hold, the New Popular Front essentially campaigning on a disruptive economic program, which worries business and financial circles, and on the promise to stand in the way of the far right.
On television, Jean-Luc Mélenchon thus estimated that President Emmanuel Macron was “campaigning to have a Prime Minister of the RN”, because he “spends his time hitting us”. “Jordan Bardella is Macron coated in racism,” he accused. The leader of the RN, for his part, estimated that the rebellious leader embodied “the most brutal and sectarian left”.
Emmanuel Macron’s bet
For its part, the presidential camp is trying to loosen the grip between the RN and the left, by putting them on an equal footing as “the extremes” and presenting itself as a force that is “responsible and reasonable, capable of acting and to appease.”
But Emmanuel Macron, although asked by some of his troops not to appear in the campaign, was especially distinguished by a heavy charge on Tuesday against the left united under the banner of the New Popular Front. He castigated his program, calling it “totally immigrationist”. He also denounced the “ubiquitous” desire of the New Popular Front to allow “sex changes in town hall”.
Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to call early legislative elections after his large defeat in the European elections constitutes his biggest risk since coming to power in 2017. However, he has ruled out resigning whatever the outcome of the election, while his second term ends in 2027.
Punished for having highlighted the RN?
For the writer and editorialist Franz-Olivier Giesbert, French politics is currently nothing more than a field of ruins from which only a hard right and a hard left emerge. And this, through the fault of Emmanuel Macron: “It was his policy! He did everything to put forward the RN, because he thought, like François Mitterrand before him, that it would be easier for him to have an adversary like the National Rally,” he accused on Sunday in the RTS show Forum.
For Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Emmanuel Macron’s current tactics and his decision to dissolve the National Assembly is also not as surprising as many political commentators thought. “It’s an intuition that I had, but it is confirmed by some information: he is afraid of the management of the debt crisis in the fall,” he said, evoking in particular bad signs from the Brussels commission and rating agencies.
“Emmanuel Macron has put France in frightening debt,” continues the editorialist, who estimates that a third of the country’s 3,000 billion debt is attributable to him. “And when you get into a lot of debt, at some point, you have to be held accountable. We feel that this moment has arrived, and I think that we say that it is ultimately no worse that it is the RN who manages the debt crisis.
>> Listen to the interview with Franz-Olivier Giesbert at Forum:
Pierrik Jordan/vic with dpa
