French President Macron urges voters to join and reject extremism

French President Emmanuel Macron has defended his shock decision to dissolve parliament and call elections, urging French voters to unite and “say no to extremism.”

Three days after his surprise announcement in response to the dramatic victory achieved by the far-right National Rally party in the European elections, Macron denied that he wanted to hand them the keys to power.

He said that calling for elections is the only Republican option. He said a wide range of political groups “that cannot sympathize with this extremist fever” should unite against it.

His decision to call two rounds of elections on June 30 and July 7 prompted four left-wing parties to agree a deal to work together, but conservative Republicans remain deeply divided.

Hard-line Republican leader Eric Ciotti is facing calls to resign after he called for an alliance with the National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella.

Although an estimated half of the Republican base supports such an alliance, the vast majority of party leaders have rejected it outright.

Ciotti said that the party’s headquarters in Paris was closed for security reasons, hours before an emergency meeting to decide whether an emergency meeting was scheduled to be held there. He denied that such a meeting had been planned.

President Macron was widely criticized for his seemingly spontaneous decision to call elections, an hour after his party received less than 15% while the National Rally received nearly 31.5% in the European vote.

Two years into his second term as president, his party is without a majority in the National Assembly, so all legislation requires support from political allies. He said the system had become dysfunctional, leaving the government unable to act.

Macron said he would not participate as president in election campaigns and would leave that to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although his speech on Wednesday sounded like his party’s campaign launch.

In response to a journalist’s question whether he had handed over the keys of France to the far right, Macron said that doing nothing is not an option, and that asking people to make decisions is a principle of democracy. Voters who supported the National Rally Party on Sunday expressed their anger, and he said: “The message has been received.”

Macron directed his fire to the left and the right, arguing that the masks of each had slipped and that the battle for values ​​had come out into the light of day.

Ciotti was accused of turning his back on his party, which owes its heritage to Presidents Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.

He then said that the center left had joined the far left, which is condemned for anti-Semitism and anti-parliamentary positions.

Raphaël Glucksmann led the center-left to third place on Sunday with a campaign that appealed to voters disaffected by France’s most extreme party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. However, within 24 hours of the result, the center-left agreed to a deal with France Unencumbered.

Mélenchon accused the president of diving into a strategy of chaos and drowning in a torrent of insults toward “those who do not share his opinion.”