Declaring himself an “incorrigible optimist,” President Emmanuel Macron of France appealed on Wednesday to all French people “who reject the extremes” to vote for centrist parties in snap elections and so save the Republic from the bigotry of the far right and the antisemitism of the extreme left.
At a two-hour news conference, a third of it consisting of a speech by the president, Mr. Macron painted a somber picture of economic chaos, lawlessness and a society where there would be “true French citizens and lesser ones” if Marine Le Pen’s National Rally came to power.
“I do not intend to hand the keys of power to the extreme right in 2027,” Mr. Macron, who is term limited, vowed, alluding to the next presidential election.
Yet by dissolving the National Assembly and calling parliamentary elections starting 18 days from now, Mr. Macron has opened the possibility that he may have to hand over some of those keys in 2024. His gamble that the National Rally, which won more than double the vote of Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance in European Parliament elections on Sunday, will not repeat that performance in a domestic vote is a high-risk one.
If the National Rally emerges as by far the largest party in the elections on June 30 and July 7, as polls currently indicate it will, Mr. Macron may be obliged to name a prime minister from Ms. Le Pen’s party, probably its president, Jordan Bardella, 28.
Asked why he had rolled the dice, Mr. Macron said it was essential to have a “clarification,” a word he returned to multiple times. It would have shown disrespect for the will of the people, he insisted, if he had ignored the fact that “50 percent of French people voted for the extremes” in the European election — a reference to votes for far-right and far-left parties.
“You would have said, ‘This guy has lost it!’” he said.
Yet that is precisely what many French people have been saying over the past few days. Even members of his own party have expressed dismay over a leader who made a decision that was not dictated by any constitutional requirement and that has thrust the country into turmoil on the eve of the Olympic Games, which begin in Paris next month.
Mr. Macron said he would not quit under any circumstances, would not debate Ms. Le Pen, and would not himself campaign for the elections, a task he said would be led by Gabriel Attal, the prime minister. Of course, his disquisition on the priorities of the election was itself clearly a campaign speech.
Asked repeatedly if he would name Mr. Bardella prime minister if the National Rally triumphed, Mr. Macron refused to engage in “fictional” speculation and took refuge in a defiant optimism that for now seems more wishful than anchored in facts.
The outreach of Mr. Macron to what is left of the French center seemed heartfelt and was laced with the word “humility,” as well as promises of governing in a different way. But it could not obviate the fact that he has effectively eviscerated the center-right Republicans, who are in turmoil over whether to ally with the National Rally in the election, and, to a lesser degree, the center-left Socialist Party since coming to power in 2017.
He has replaced them with a party that is little more than a personal vehicle representing what is known as “la Macronie,” a collection of centrists whose chief shared characteristic is their fierce loyalty to the president.
Mr. Macron appealed to ecologists, to Socialists, to Social Democrats, to radicals, even to what is left of the Communist Party, to come together before or after the election and trace a new path forward for France. This, he said, would need to recognize the widespread sense of “loss of control, dispossession, and relegation” among French citizens in rural areas and other places disconnected from the wired cities of the knowledge economy.
The problem is that Mr. Macron has made such promises before. At the time of the Yellow Vest protest movement that began in 2018, and after his re-election in 2022, he vowed to listen better and assume a new humility. There is little evidence as yet that the other political currents he has ignored during a very centralized and hierarchical presidency are ready to come to his rescue.
“We are not perfect,” Mr. Macron said, even as he dodged personal responsibility for the heavy defeat in the European election by saying that nationalist far-right movements were rising in many countries in Europe.
The president’s accusation of antisemitism appeared certain to anger the leftist France Unbowed party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which has been fervent in its support of Palestinians and virulent in its criticism of Israel since the Gaza war began.
Mr. Mélenchon has accused the former prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, of presenting a “foreign point of view,” and Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Jewish president of the now dissolved National Assembly, of “camping out in Tel Aviv.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Le Pen, whose father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of her party, was an outright antisemite, has been outspoken in her defense of Israel and argues that her party has now become the natural home for the French Jewish community, given its hostility to Muslim immigration. Major Jewish organizations have up to now resisted her appeals.
Mr. Macron, clearly trying to appeal to National Rally voters, said he was determined to impose more “firmness” and “authority,” lamenting that measures already taken to increase the recruitment of police officers and curtail illegal immigration had not been “seen enough, felt enough, or understood by our compatriots.”
Talking a lot, as he is inclined to, Mr. Macron became impassioned several times when he spoke of the defense of the Republic and core French values. He equated the National Rally coming to power with a disaster that would impoverish and eviscerate the country.
“What would become of your pensions if the National Rally governed?” he asked. “What would become of your real estate loans whose cost will shoot up as interest rates rise?” His voice rising, Mr. Macron continued, “What would happen to our values, and our binational compatriots of diverse origins living in the projects?”
There was a difference, Mr. Macron argued, between a vote of anger, as in the European Parliament election, and the approaching legislative election. French people of good sense would, he said, step back from the brink.
He concluded thundering: “No to defeat. Yes to awakening, to a leap forward for the Republic!”