Macron still thinks he can defeat Bardella

DRIVING THE DAY: FAR RIGHT VICTORY IN FRANCE       

MACRON CALLS SNAP ELECTION: There’s plenty to digest from last night’s European Parliament election results, but let’s start with the shocker: French President Emmanuel Macron announcing a snap election after his Renaissance party suffered a humiliating defeat to the far-right National Rally. That could open the door to Jordan Bardella becoming France’s next prime minister.

Shock and awe: No one was prepared for what Macron would say when he went live on TV shortly after France’s result was announced, least of all his party rank-and-file. Watch this montage of supporters dismissing the idea of a snap election just minutes before the president started speaking. POLITICO’s Nicolas Camut writes in to report that when the plan was revealed, the crowd at his party’s HQ burst into shouts of “Oh no!”

What this means: French voters will return to the polls in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7, to elect a new national parliament. If the National Rally comes out on top in that contest, Bardella — a 28-year-old political wunderkind who took over the National Rally less than two years ago — could become France’s youngest-ever prime minister.

Stranger than fiction: Many fictional “what if” scenarios imagining a Le Pen presidential victory have been written, including this multi-tome best-selling comic. But there’s a big stretch between those musings and reality. And few people had imagined the far right taking over the reins of government as part of a “cohabitation” with a president from a rival party.

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Need it be said? The National Rally taking over France’s government would be one of the biggest political disruptions in the country’s postwar history — and almost the final step on the party’s path to “normalization.” 

Gobsmacked: Not even the National Rally’s diehard backers seemed ready for Macron’s announcement. Supporters at their election event were busy booing the president’s address when he called the snap election, at which point they burst into cheers and clapping and chants of “démission! démission!” (“resign! resign!”), Giorgi Leali reports from the party’s event space in the Bois de Vincennes, near Paris.

All about Brussels: Three-time presidential contender Marine Le Pen used her address to direct a warning at the seat of EU institutions: “Tonight’s message, including the dissolution, is also addressed to the leaders of Brussels,” she said, flanked by Bardella. “This great victory for patriotic movements is in line with the direction of history … It closes this painful globalist interlude that has caused so much suffering to the world’s peoples.”

Bring it on: “We’re ready to exercise power,” she added. (Would it be Le Pen, or Bardella? Polls suggests that National Rally supporters are leaning toward the younger option.)

What’s behind Macron’s move: Macron, who was an investment banker before his startling rise to the presidency, has a track record of making huge political bets. In 2016, he wagered that a centrist insurgent candidate could create his own party and disrupt France’s mainstream center-right and center-left parties, and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest guess. Now he’s rolling the dice again, challenging the National Rally to prove they can govern and not just shout from the sidelines. 

It’s risky, but not irrational. For better or worse, the European Parliament election is seen in France as a chance for voters to vent frustration with the country’s leadership in a relatively low-stakes contest. They might feel differently about voting to install a party that has never been near government — especially amid the war in Ukraine and an increasingly volatile international context.

If Bardella pulls it off in July, he would most likely become prime minister as part of a “cohabitation” with Macron. That’s an unenviable position that’s historically translated to governmental paralysis. It doesn’t help that prime ministers in France are highly exposed and tend to be disposable: Macron is on his fourth prime minister with Gabriel Attal.

Once installed at Matignon, the prime minister’s office, Bardella would be hard-pressed to govern with a civil service that could well be hostile. Three years of ineffectual government would set the stage for a revanche by one of Macron’s acolytes in 2027. (The president himself is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.)

How the Macronites see it: “Sometimes you need to have balls,” Maxime, a 26-year-old Macron supporter, told Nicolas. “I am afraid of the rise of the far right but it’s a brave decision [to call the snap election]. We’ll only be able to say on July 7 if it was the right one.”

How others see it, 1 … Olivier Blanchard, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economic in Washington, tweeted that it was “smart and the right move,” because the “incoherence” of the National Rally’s program will be discredited either in the campaign or soon after winning. “In this case, we get two bad years, compared to five if they won the 2027 elections.”

How others see it, 2 … But Simon Hix, a political scientist at the European University Institute, tweeted: “Macron is crazy! Suicidal move calling a snap election. What is he expecting, that every other party except RN joins a ‘save the Republic’ coalition?”

How others see it, 3 … “It will almost certainly put a brake on Le Pen,” Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head of the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy, told my colleague Clea Caulcutt. “I don’t think Le Pen will do as well in the legislative election, it’s a two round election, it’s a different group of voters who will be mobilized.”

Eurostar to nowhere: Valérie Hayer, Macron’s lead candidate, was badly defeated but her backers argue she was put in an impossible position after several male Renaissance officials turned down offers to run Macron’s campaign. The feeling among some observers was that she’d been set up for a certain political defeat.

According to one senior Renew official who spoke to my colleague Elisa Braün, Hayer’s party had booked her a Eurostar train ticket to Brussels departing on Sunday evening so she could start negotiations immediately with European People’s Party (EPP) chief Manfred Weber and others. Hayer never boarded the train.

Will Macron’s move delay the EU top jobs race? That’s unlikely, my colleague Eddy Wax is hearing. An EU official predicted that the timetable of holding the key top jobs European Council summit at the end of June will stay the same. “This is gonna happen regardless of what [Macron] wants … I don’t see how anyone else can justify in their countries saying: ‘France has an election so we’ll have to put Europe on hold’.”

WINNERS AND LOSERS       

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: With 27 countries all reporting results, the European Parliament election can be dizzying. Eddy breaks down the key takeaways into 12 “winners and losers,” with help from Elisa.

IT WAS A GOOD NIGHT FOR …

Ursula von der Leyen: Who can stop her now? The European Commission president emerged from Sunday’s vote with a possible coalition of Socialists, liberals and her own center-right EPP. Together, these three groups — which supported her during her current term — are expected to have some 407 votes in the chamber. That’s more than the 361 she will need, but because of possible defections, her victory still isn’t a done deal.

My colleagues Stuart Lau, Barbara Moens, Eddy and Elisa report in this piece that von der Leyen is now scrambling for a political deal to secure a second term as Commission president.

Manfred Weber, the EPP leader, called on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Macron to support von der Leyen for five more years. That carries weight after the EPP won in Germany, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Latvia, Estonia,Finland, Croatia and Greece. The center-right party also picked up six seats in the Netherlands, outperforming expectations.

Giorgia Meloni: The Italian prime minister was one of the few leaders of a large EU country (along with Poland’s Donald Tusk) who could claim a victory after her hard-right Brothers of Italy substantially increased its support to finish top of the polls there.

The far right: France’s National Rally was the big story of the night after its strong performance forced Macron’s election gamble — but far-right parties also came first in Austria, tied for first in the Netherlands and came second in Germany and Romania. French firebrand Éric Zemmour’s Reconquest also scraped into Parliament. 

Socialists: Well, kinda. While they didn’t exactly dazzle, the Socialists maintained their size, coming second in Spain and Italy and a close third in France, where Raphaël Glucksmann appears to have resurrected the center-left. They won in Sweden and may have beaten the center-right by a whisker in Portugal. Just don’t mention Germany, where Scholz’s Socalists came in a sad third.

Péter Magyar: An ally-turned-rival of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Magyar has emerged as the undisputed face of Hungary’s opposition, winning some 30 percent of the vote after throwing his hat into the ring earlier this year.

Roberta Metsola: The Maltese president of the European Parliament got her party an extra seat, having racked up more than 87,000 first preferences. Maltese media reported that she won more votes than any MEP candidate since the country joined the EU. The ruling Labor party claimed victory but lost a seat. 

IN THE LOSERS’ CAMP…

Emmanuel Macron: The French president was dealt a blow after his party came in a distant second, barely ahead of the Socialists he was once thought to have consigned to the margins.

Olaf Scholz: The German Chancellor’s Social Democrats were crushed by the center-right Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany. With just 14 percent of the vote, the SPD endured its worst result in a national election in more than a century. Scholz is facing calls from the center-right to do a Macron and call an early election.

Viktor Orbán: The Hungarian nationalist leader did worse than expected. The emergence of Magyar as a challenger put the ruling Fidesz on track for its worst ever result in a European Parliament election, its 43.8 percent significantly lower than polls had predicted. POLITICO’s Victor Jack has more here. Whether Orbán maneuvers his MEPs into ECR remains one of the big unanswered questions of the election.

Greens: After a strong performance in 2019, the Greens took a thumping in Germany, slipping from 21 seats to perhaps just 12, barely clung on in France and got nothing in Portugal. Overall, they lost around 20 seats on a bleak night for the Green Deal enthusiasts. Putting on a brave face, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout said the Greens would seek to play a “constructive” role in coalition talks ⁠— that is, if von der Leyen is interested in talking to them.

Though von der Leyen avoided saying whether she would open negotiations with the Greens, the picture was different behind the scenes. According to two sources, lead candidate Eickhout had a warm one-to-one chat with her off stage in the hemicycle; one said they even hugged. Eickhout and von der Leyen are said to get on well personally. Could there be hope for the Greens who want to join the coalition yet?

Matteo Salvini: The Italian deputy prime minister’s League party, which has 22 MEPs in the current parliament and presides over the ID group, received just 8.6 percent of the vote. Ciao to them.

Alexander De Croo: The Belgian PM’s Flemish liberals fell into the single digits in the national election on Sunday, as the country shifted to the right. It wasn’t the landslide for the radical right that many expected, but the result prompted De Croo to resign as prime minister; he will stay on as caretaker until a new government is formed. The far-right separatist Vlaams Belang party, which had led the polls in recent months, grabbed 21 percent of Flemish votes Sunday but did not overtake its Flemish conservative rivals New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which became Belgium’s biggest party with around 25 percent of Flemish votes. Pieter Haeck and Camille Gijs have the details.

IN OTHER NEWS       

ISRAEL-GAZA LATEST: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East today with the proposed cease-fire between Israel and Hamas hanging in the balance, the Associated Press reports. With Hamas still to respond to the proposal it received 10 days ago, Blinken will meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo before traveling to Israel, Jordan and Qatar.

ICYMI … Centrist Israeli minister Benny Gantz resigned from Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government on Sunday, claiming the prime minister’s approach is “preventing us from advancing toward true victory” in Gaza. Gantz’s resignation will not immediately collapse the coalition government but will leave Netanyahu more reliant on nationalist hardliners … It came after Israel on Saturday rescued four hostages who were kidnapped in a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. Gaza’s health authorities said 274 Palestinians were killed in the rescue operation. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. offered assistance with the rescue but did not provide specific details.

‘BEER TENT’ POLITICS: A tirade by the head of Germany’s stock exchange savaging the coalition government of Olaf Scholz and warning that the EU’s largest economy risked becoming a “developing country” has gone viral, the FT reports, to the fury of the chancellor’s allies. The speech by Deutsche Börse CEO Theodor Weimer was “bizarre” and “more beer tent than Dax-listed company executive,” the Social Democrats’ Verena Hubertz told the paper.

HUNGER CRISIS IN SUDAN: An escalating civil war in Sudan has already killed more than 15,000 and displaced millions. Now Sudan is on the brink of becoming the “world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” the head of the World Food Programme warned on Sunday.

**It's happening next week – POLITICO's Financial Regulation Reporter Kathryn Carlson will run a panel discussion with four experts to debate the Commission's CMU agenda, the role of non-banks and new legislation. Sign up now to tune in live on June 19!** 

AGENDA       

— Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager is in Kajaani, Finland, where she will visit the LUMI Supercomputer Center and the DestinE exhibition with Arto Satonen, Finland’s employment minister … she will also meet Ilkka Hämälä, CEO of Metsä Group, and Niklas Von Weymarn, CEO of Metsä Spring.

— Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis isin Berlin, Germany, participating in a discussion on Germany’s Ukraine policy. 

— Commission Executive Vice President Maroš Šefčovič is in Berlin, Germany, where he will deliver a keynote speech at the Europe-Ukraine Energy Transition Hub event … meets Anne-Laure de Chammard, a member of Siemens Energy group executive board … visits Siemens Energy and Air Liquide’s gigawatt electrolyzer production facility.

— Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli visitsNew York, U.S., where she will meet José Viera, director of the International Disability Alliance, in the margins of the 17th Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities … meets Alessandra Locatelli, minister for disabilities in Italy … meets a delegation of the U.N. Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

— Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson is in Stockholm, Sweden, where she will deliver the keynote address at the closing conference of the Promise Transnational Referral Mechanism Project for child victims of trafficking.

— Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarčič receives Yehuda Shaul, co-director of OFEK, the Israeli Center for Public Affairs.

— International Partnerships Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen in Vilnius, Lithuania; meets Gabrielius Landsbergis, minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania.

— Innovation Commissioner Iliana Ivanova delivers a video message at the launch of the LOFAR European research infrastructure … delivers a video message at the opening ceremony of the Science and Technology Park of Montenegro … delivers a video message at the EURAXESS biannual conference.

— Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra in Stockholm, Sweden; meets Magdalena Andersson, former Swedish prime minister and finance minister, in Riksdagen … meets Anko van der Werff, president and CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Group, in Solna … meets students at Tallbacka school, in Solna … visits the facilities of Skanska construction company.

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BRUSSELS CORNER       

WEATHER: High of 13C, rain.

ONE FOR YOUR EATING-OUT LIST: POLITICO’s Carlo Martuscelli ventured deep into Uccle to check out Chez Luma, a restaurant with a modern take on French bistro food, and he reckons it was worth the hike. Its owners, he found, have “managed to create something that feels like a cozy neighborhood restaurant, but that looks a lot better.” Read Carlo’s full review here.

NEW LOOK FOR THE FLOWER CARPET: The annual event that turns the Grand Place into a giant floral display will return in August but its design will be refreshed for the first time in decades, its organizers said. This year’s flower carpet has been designed by the young street artist Océane Cornille and will mostly use dahlias instead of the traditional begonias. 

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT: Regional authorities have approved the redevelopment of one of the big Proximus office towers in the north of the city into a residential housing complex with 272 apartments and accommodation for more than 90 student rooms, Brussels Times reported.

ELECTRIC CARRIAGES ON GRAND PLACE: Tour operator Thibault Danthine has launched what he claims is Europe’s first electric carriage service for tourists, replacing the horse and cart rides that historically carried tourists around the city center. Danthine stopped running the old horse and cart services two years ago because it was too hard to find staff and criticism that it was cruel to the horses. Three electric carriages will operate from the Grand Place, which the city hopes will attract 15,000 tourists annually.

BIRTHDAYS: Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Petra de Sutter; MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar; former MEPs Michał Boni and Filiz Hyusmenova; POLITICO contributor Simon Marks; European Parliament’s Neil Corlett; Elysée’s Rhizlane Bouachra; Deputy Director of the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin Nils Redeker; ERCST’s Chiara Cavallera. Portugal Day.

THANKS TO: Clea Caulcutt, Giorgio Leali, Nicolas Camut, Elisa Braun, Eddy Wax, Jakob Hanke Vela, Playbook editor Alex Spence, reporter Ketrin Jochecová and producer Dato Parulava.

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