France has the second largest share of seats in the European Parliament and has significant might in the EU as a founding member and the second largest economic power. President Emmanuel Macron has become an important figure in Europe and has heavily advocated for a united and sovereign European Union. A key figure following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he kept dialogue open with Vladimir Putin at first, but has since morphed into one of Ukraine’s most outspoken supporters. Yet, at home, he is unpopular and the far-right is thriving. How will this play out when the French go to the polls on June 9th? We highlight the major changes in the French political environment since the EP elections in 2019 and specify the major political players in this year’s election.
French political and social dynamics since 2019
Since the last EP elections, the French have experienced soaring costs of living. With Europe’s highest tax-to-GDP ratio, high interest rates, and possible cutbacks to social benefits and budgets to local governments, Macron and the ruling government are feeling the pressure from voters. There has also been an upswing in anti-immigrant sentiment, which has become a potent political force, with a 2022 survey finding 45 percent of the population believe their country had “too many immigrants.”
A more recent survey from earlier this year, found that 68 percent of French people view their country as heading in the wrong direction. Part of what drives this opinion is a perception of a breakdown of authority. Authority-holders, such as head teachers and even the police, seem to have lost a certain degree of command and respect. People are craving a return to order on the streets and discipline in schools which the current government has not been able to deliver.
This has led to a general dissatisfaction with Macron’s centrist government, which often appears out of touch with the concerns of ordinary French citizens. It has also led to a groundswell of support for a radical right populist party, National Rally.
Key political actors and their outlook
In the 2019 EU elections, the centrist coalition formed around Macron’s Renaissance party (formerly La République En Marche) came joint top with 23 of France’s 79 seats. The far-right ID affiliated National Rally (RN) also won 23 seats but suffered several defections to end with 18.
In the upcoming elections, RN is expected to make major gains, capturing nearly a third of the vote. Recent polls place support for RN above 30 percent. The party that tied with it in 2019—Macron’s centre-right coalition—is predicted to come in a distant second in June, with current polls placing support for this Renew affiliated coalition, now called Ensemble, below 18 percent.
On the progressive side, the Green parties led in 2019 with their coalition securing 12 French seats. This was followed by the S&D affiliated centre-left coalition with seven seats and the left-wing GUE/NGL affiliated coalition with six.
In the upcoming EP elections, the centre-left seems to be rallying around the S&D-affiliated coalition led by Raphaël Glucksmann, currently in third place with around 13 percent support. The Green coalition and the left-wing GUE/NGL affiliated party, France Unbowed (FI) are both down around seven percent.
The once popular centre-right EPP affiliated coalition formed around the Republicans—a reincorporation of the Union for a Popular Movement that governed France from 2002 to 2012 under Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy—managed only eight seats in 2019. This number could dwindle further in the 2024 EP elections with the party trailing around seven percent support.
The right becomes mainstream
National Rally has worked to soften its image by ditching some of its more unelectable policy proposals, such as an exit from the Euro and NATO, while toning down its anti-Islam rhetoric.
The party‘s drive toward respectability has been boosted by a young star, Jordan Bardella, who is the party‘s president and leading MEP. He has managed to airbrush some of the party’s less palatable positions while remaining popular with the RN base, currently polling around 32 percent. In the future, he could replace Marine Le Pen as the leader of the movement, although she leads the RN caucus in the National Assembly and is still intent on running for president again in the 2027 presidential election.
Since winning 90 seats in the last French parliamentary election, RN has sought to appear responsible and go beyond mere protest politics. Though they voted against most of the government’s legislation, they did support its immigration bill in an embarrassment for Macron’s centrists. Despite this, no party has been willing to join forces with them thus far, indicating that RN has not been fully accepted into mainstream politics.
The party’s success can also be attributed to its ability to champion the rural population and those removed from the intellectual metropolitan elites. In fact, RN is now the most popular party among French citizens who identify as working class.
They appeal to farmers and people who reside outside cities, and are thus car-dependent, with their stance against EU environmental regulation. They appeal to the working class by promising to help them economically and reverse the recent increase in the retirement age. The party has successfully captured eurosceptical sentiment present in France by advocating against EU green regulations, such as those that impact price of fuel and restrict farmland use.
A vacuum on the centre-right and a crowd on the far-right
The critical dynamics driving this rightward shift in France are familiar across the EU: worsening economic conditions for large sectors of the population, anti-immigrant sentiment, and a backlash against a perceived neoliberal government. But the rise in support for the RN has also been helped by the fall of the traditional centre-right party, The Republicans (LR).
After the party‘s presidential candidate, Francois Fillon, was mired by a corruption scandal in 2017, the party haemorrhaged support, which mostly went to Macron at the time and contributed to his presidential victory. Now, however, this hole on the right has allowed RN to flourish.
LR looks unlikely to recover anytime soon. It is currently divided between a right-wing faction that is, to a large extent, mimicking the politics of RN and a more centrist faction that aims to take a more pragmatic approach to policy making. The centrist faction is weaker, however, and has lost some figures to the party of Macron.
The National Rally has also managed to gain a certain degree of respectability thanks to the presence of a more radical party on the extreme right, Reconquest (REC). Éric Zemmour, the president and founder of REC, is deeply anti-immigrant and Islamophobic.
His rhetoric is more openly hateful than that of leading RN figures. Zemmour was fined in 2018 for incitement of hate against Muslims and was previously fined for incitement to racial discrimination. He has also openly supported the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement“, claiming that French people will be replaced by non-French, non-European people. The extremism of Zemmour’s party makes the RN look respectable in comparison.
The centre-left’s ray of hope
With the whole country tilting right, the left is in poor shape totalling less than one-third of support in opinion polls. It must find a way to revitalise itself if it hopes to regain the majority support it once enjoyed.
Raphaël Glucksmann, a current MEP and leader allied with the Socialist Party, has managed to take some centre-left votes away from Macron as the government has drifted to the right in order to compete with RN. Glucksmann is firmly pro-European, a supporter of Ukraine, in favour of social policies and a degree of protectionism. For many voters on the left, Glucksmann is more appealing than Jean-Luc Melenchon—of the left-wing party France Unbowed (FI)— who has been accused of flirting with anti-semitism.
Glucksmann’s list is vying for the same electorate as the Ecologists. However, more voters may rally behind Glucksmann as the election draws near, due to the same snowball effect that benefited the Greens in 2019.
What to expect
With his government suffering from widespread dissatisfaction, Macron needed to change the agenda and reframe the EP elections to avoid it turning into a protest vote against himself. He tried to do this with an ambitious speech on Europe at the Sorbonne university on April 25.
So far, his approach has been to try to frame the EP vote as a war election about standing up to Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, depicting his rightist and far left adversaries as insufficiently critical of the Kremlin. Le Pen was an avowed fan of Putin right up to the invasion of Ukraine, and her party took a loan from a Russian bank a decade ago. Macron can highlight this threat.
He is also highlighting the fact that the EU has passed an important asylum package, which will make it tougher for asylum seekers to get into Europe and will encourage EU countries to share the burden. Although he contends that this means France and the EU will be able to deal with immigration and asylum in a satisfactory way, it may be insufficient for the voters attracted to the far-right.
In France, people will not have another chance to vote until the 2026 municipal elections, followed by presidential elections in 2027. That makes the upcoming EP election a chance for citizens to express their dissatisfaction with Macron’s government. A significant portion of the votes against the government will go to the National Rally. However, some protest votes— albeit in much smaller numbers— may boost Glucksmann’s centre-left coalition. One thing is certain: the election results in France will certainly contribute to the rise of an organised far-right in the European Parliament.
