Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, nationalist party is estimated to get around 31-32% of the votes, a historic result more than double the share of Mr Macron’s Renaissance party, which is projected to reach around 15%.

Mr Macron, who lost his majority at the National Assembly in 2022, is taking a big risk with the move that could backfire and increase the chances of Ms Le Pen eventually taking power.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/macron-dissolves-french-parliament-and-calls-snap-election-after-eu-vote-defeat-1635939.html

Mi-figue mi-raisin 😊

Sanchez did something similar n Spain. Poor display in local elections so he called a general one and stemmed the rise of the right, practically removing the far-right on a national level in the process.

Very personal opinion that but not shared by everyone. Poland has had an incredible rise in strength and wealth under the PiS. GDP growth has been collosol. More than halving the unemployment rate. Polish cities have statistically some of the lowest crime rates in Europe and you really feel that in the city centres there compared to Irish and other European cities.

It has struggled with rampant inflation that much of Europe also faced but made worse by having their own currency. Now they've shifted left but only to the centre right EPP.

Interesting that the brexit disaster has managed to transform parties to the right across Europe into something that looks electable by them abandoning similar exit policies.

And that the UK is now swinging back the other way.

What are you talking about? Our GDP didn't hike in any way. Stays just average.

And the latest GDP growth.

While our debt sky rocketed especially outside budget. They also ruined our judicial system and if they stayed in power for 4 more years, we would have Russia system in Poland with oligarchs making their wealth from stealing public money. Not even mentioning rampant corruption, cronyism and nepotism.With hatred propaganda non stop on our public TV. Good luck in wishing anyone to live in a such country.

And crime rates were even lower during socialism times because we were a police country, so it is not an achievement of PIS.

Your view is very naive.

a bit of an overreaction I'd say. There were pretty much zero rumblings from anywhere about any new Brexit's in the EU.

Macron made 2 mistakes …. the first was being too hardline on the so-called 'pension reform' and not listening to the concerns of the people during protests about that …..

The second mistake is hardline rhetoric regarding Ukraine …. too much talk of sending troops to Ukraine etc …. in other words inviting WW3 as a real possibility …. such bellicose language only emboldens the hardliners in Russia and Putin is more likely to give them concessions if Macron is talking like that …. ultimately shifting Russia's government further to the far right …. Macron meanwhile scares the French people and nobody wants to hear talk of NATO troops from their country going in to fight against the Russian army ….

As if the European Elections and upcoming UK, Iranian and US elections were not enough …. this French election is thrown in as well …. we will have to wait and see …. this Marine Le Pen? …. will she be a real far right lunatic like Trump or Hitler or will she be more a French Georgia Meloni ?? … one thing is she is not her father and is more moderate …. in other words she may not be far right at all …. I do not consider Meloni to be real far right as she is too pragmatic and Marine Le Pen may be more like that than the lunatics in the US Republican party ….

Ultimately we will have to wait and see …… Macron was a bit of a disaster and turned off large swathes of his electorate …

PS … where is your man Sarcozy thesse days ??? Would he attempt to revive himself and grab an opportunity ?? …

Ah, I see the slightly more aggressive version is posting today.

The benefit, I think, is puncturing expectations about a coming far-right wave. He hopes to show that people will vote for far-right parties in euro elections in numbers that simply won't be replicated in national elections with a change of government at stake. Plus he hopes that the rigours of actually holding any office will take further shine off the Le Pen movement.

The prize here is the next French presidential election. Macron can't stand — there's a two-term max — but he will hope to hand over to a centrist successor, not to Le Pen.

Indeed, some risk of course that voters take umbrage to a perceived "when it comes down to it, Monsieur Tout-le-Monde will fall into line" arrogance — but Macron appears to be banking on not allowing months of narrative to build up.

They are more traditional left than far right.

Their economics is very familiar to any left wing party, and even most Christian Democratic parties pre Thatcher and Reagan.

They are a rejection of the idea that the pure unfettered free market is always good and always beneficial.

The people who make up the left and "progressive" movements are people who have disproportionately benefit from the free market.

The working class have disproportionately lost out from it.

Hence parties like these are now the people's movement, the vehicle of the working class.

Terms like left and right are no longer really relevant.

He has a democratic mandate to reform pensions

As I explained above, this is not entirely clear. He was elected thanks to the anti far right vote, not because of support for his proposed reforms. He promised at the time that he would take into account the nature of that vote, but then immediately ignored it.

I agree that support for Ukraine vs Russia is pretty rock solid in France. The reason many people are afraid of "boots on the ground" is because of a fear of escalation to nuclear conflict, not because they've lost interest in Ukraine.

I mean, the disappointing numbers of first round votes for his policies, along with protests in the street, widely supported by polling numbers, are kind of a clue.

Nobody argued that he was re-elected because people actively supported his economic policies. One could argue that he was re-elected despite them.

And of course he increased his share in the second round. That's how the system works.

The poster said he increased his first round share in the second election he participated in. He got 24.01% in the 2017 first round and 27.9% in the 2022 first round.

In other words, after five years of his presidency, he convinced even more people to vote for him than the first time around.