2024 dissolution of the National Assembly

On 9 June 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly. This came following the announcement of the results of the 2024 European Parliament election in France, in which the far-right National Rally (RN) won the largest proportion of seats with Macron's centrist Renaissance party trailing behind.

Aftermath

From the day of the announcement of the dissolution, many leftist party leaders called for the formation of a "popular front" against the National Rally. The day after, this was done as the leaders convened and created a anti-far-right coalition, known as the New Popular Front.

The Les Républicains (LR) party, the largest center-right party in France since the mid 20th century, faced a catastrophic crisis following an announcement from Eric Ciotti saying that he seeked to form a coalition with the National Rally. This immediately faced backlash from the vast majority of the party and many called for him to resign. Initially, the rest of the party planned to meet in the LR headquarters as to vote on wether to expulse him or not. This was, however, stopped by Eric Ciotti himself by locking the headquarters with him inside, forcing them to meet elsewhere. He was then removed from party leadership, despite his protests, unanimously. On 14 June, a court in Paris ruled in Ciotti's favor and re-instated him as leader of the party and reversed his exclusion, though this did not prevent multiple legislators from leaving the party beforehand.

On 12 June, Marion Maréchal, vice-president of the Reconquête party, reached out to the RN as to create an electoral alliance, however this was rejected by both the RN and Eric Zemmour, president of Reconquête, as both did not want to associate with the other. As a consequence, Marion Maréchal and three other members left the party and declared their support of the RN.

Reactions

Left-wing

The Socialist Party, led by Raphaël Glucksmann, reacted quite negatively and said that "Macron gave in to the demands of Jordan Bardella" and that it was a "dangerous game with democracy and European institutions", being "flabbergasted" by the decision. Olivier Faure, general secretary of the Socialists, invited the left to work on a "useful rally", as there was a "difference of strength that had evolved".

For Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the LFI, things were completely different. To the opposite of what Raphäel said, he argued that Macron "had reason to dissolve it, for there was no more legitimity to the politics that were his", also adding "there is no other serious and immediate option that to vote". Manuel Bompard, one of his fellow party members, completed his view by stating that "we are constructing an alternative to the far-right" and "we are ready".

The PCF (French Communist Party) shares this view, with it's national secretary, Fabien Roussel, publicly expressing that he "is not scared of these elections" and "it's amazing to be able to retake control of our politics when we feel that we are losing it". Though, he added that the other leftist parties do cooperate with eachother and they are working to create a "pact for France".

Right-wing

Those who seem to benefit the most from this announcement, the National Rally, reacted as greatly as the left. Marine le Pen, the parliamentary party leader and most important figure of the party, stated that they are "ready to take power if the people trust in us".

Eric Ciotti, leader of the Les Républicains party, declared that the dissolution was "the only solution" and that he would make "no coalition nor deals" with the "government that had hurt France so much".

See also

• 2024 French legislative election
• 2024 European Parliament election