‘A seismic event’: France’s far-right Marine Le Pen triumphant after unprecedented parliamentary gains

Emmannuel Macron will have to bargain and try to make compromises, writes Borzou Daragahi in Paris

Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader Marine Le Pen celebrates Sunday’s parliamentary elections results in Henin-Beaumont, northern France (AFP/Getty)

Marine Le Pen has been a fixture of French politics for decades, and just a few months ago, she was being dismissed even within her own far-right camp as a has-been in favour of her nastier, more outspoken, and sharper-tongued competitor, Eric Zemmour.

But the 53-year-old has shown herself a persistent political force to contend with, first by winning more votes than any other far-right candidate running for president in French history and then, on Sunday, by expanding her party’s foothold in the French parliament elevenfold, giving her and her party unprecedented new power.

“Macron is a minority president now,” she told reporters on Monday. “It’s a historic victory, a seismic event.”

Sunday’s elections denied French president Emmanuel Macron his absolute parliamentary majority; his party won only 251 seats compared to the 350 it held since 2017. A coalition of leftist and green parties led by Jean-Luc Melenchon garnered 131 seats, with another 22 seats won by like-minded leftists.

But it was the performance of Ms Le Pen’s National Rally that shocked observers. It had hoped to win the minimum 15 seats in the 577-member National Assembly to be able to form a bloc. Instead, it grew its foothold from eight seats to more than 89. That gives her far-right movement greater access to the levers of the French government than at any time in its history.

“She definitely has been emboldened,” said Rim-Sarah Allouane, a Toulouse-based political scholar who has been critical of what she describes as the French establishment’s flirtation with far-right ideas and policies. “She has been given more legitimacy not just by the political parties but by the media. You have some media that doesn’t even call her far right any more.”

So dramatic was Sunday’s impact that Le Pen abruptly announced plans to give up her post as president of the party to head the newly powerful parliamentary bloc.

"I will not take over the leadership of the Nationally Rally,” she told reporters. “I will focus on chairing this very large group.”

The parliamentary elections will have little direct impact on Paris’s positions on worldwide matters such as the Ukraine war or sanctions on Russia. France’s constitution places power over foreign policy and national security firmly in the Elysee Palace, where the executive branch resides.

But a president weakened at home will likely limit his ability to manoeuvre abroad. Ms Le Pen’s performance will also serve as a shot in the arm for like-minded far-right movements in the West; she has been cosy with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, as well as Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki and Spain’s far-right Vox party.

Ms Le Pen’s performance means the National Rally will have more access to crucial committees and more public visibility. The party will be able to table censure motions against the government, potentially triggering votes of no confidence, and refer to the Constitutional Council laws it does not agree with.

Ms Le Pen’s biggest payoff will be perhaps €50m in public funding that she can use to bankroll her party’s future, and possibly pay back debts to Kremlin-linked banks she has accrued over the years. For years, French banks refused to have any dealing with her or her party; that may now change.

After beating out the establishment conservative party by 20 seats and denying the upstart Mr Zemmour a single seat, Ms Le Pen can now claim the mantle of undisputed leader of the French right. Many analysts say they would not be surprised if some of the 61 lawmakers elected to the establishment Republicans broke ranks and caucused with her. That was a precedent set by Mr Macron in 2017, when he encouraged centre-left and centre-right parliamentarians to discard loyalty to their own parties and bolster his parliamentary majority.

It may take days or weeks of horse-trading before final seat allocations for each group in parliament are set. Ms Le Pen claimed that Mr Macron “will no longer be able to do what he wants”.

Describing both Mr Macron’s group and the left as coalitions rather than parties, she insisted hers was now the main opposition grouping, entitling her to both the vice-presidency of the National Assembly and the chairmanship of its powerful finance committee.

Analysts have disputed her claims to such positions. But if the elections elevated Ms Le Pen as well as the left, which saw itself become the second-ranking power in parliament, they also placed Mr Macron in the hot seat.

The ordinarily loquacious president was curiously silent in the 18 hours after polls closed.

One option for Mr Macron is dissolving the National Assembly and calling for new elections, a route that could further anger voters and hurt his standing. Another path is to to decide whether he reaches out to the left or the newly empowered far right to muster a majority.

“He will have to deal with the opposition,” says Ms Allouane. “He cannot push his legislation the way he wants. He will have to bargain, to pick a side and try to make compromises. Will he attempt to find common ground with the left, or is he going to sell what is left of his party’s soul to the far right and the conservatives?”