Emmanuel Macron is nothing if not a risk-taker. At the age of 38, an electoral debutant, he launched a new centrist party and went on to win the French presidency in 2017, barely a year later. Now Mr Macron has taken a fresh political gamble that puts his credibility and authority on the line for the three years that remain of his second term in office. His unexpected decision, announced on June 9th, to dissolve the National Assembly and hold snap elections in a two-round poll on June 30th and July 7th, has stunned even his own deputies, and left all parties scrambling to book venues, pick candidates and plan their campaigns.

Mr Macron’s decision was a response to crushing results for his party, Renaissance, at elections to the European Parliament on June 9th. The party took just half the vote secured by Marine Le Pen’s hard-right party, National Rally (RN). Her triumphant 28-year-old candidate, Jordan Bardella, scored over 31%, a party record at European elections. That evening, in a televised address, Mr Macron called his decision “grave, heavy”, but argued that he could not “carry on as if nothing had happened”. The fresh vote, the president declared, was consistent with the democratic principle that “the word should be given to the sovereign people”.

The president’s calculation seems to be that, at some point, he was likely to face an irresistible political demand for fresh parliamentary elections anyway. He presides over a minority government, which has struggled at times to pass legislation and regularly has to resort to the use of a constitutional provision that allows bills to go through without a direct vote. Each time this exposes the government to a possible no-confidence motion. Since Mr Macron was re-elected in 2022, his governments have survived 28 such votes. Another was likely—although not constitutionally inevitable—to greet the next budget, which had been due to go to parliament in September. By dissolving parliament now, Mr Macron has at least made the choice his, and has controlled the timing.

More than this, the French president is hoping for what an adviser calls a “moment of clarification”. Either the popular support for the RN is real, goes this argument, and in that case his party hopes to put its populist policies—on tax, immigration, energy—under proper scrutiny and to expose their contradictions. Or the vote represents what the French call a mid-term ras-le-bol, or fed-upness, which would not survive at its current level when the stakes are about the daily government of France.

To this end, Renaissance is seeking to force other moderate parties to support a “republican front” against the RN. Stéphane Séjourné, the foreign minister and head of Renaissance, says that the party will not put up candidates against rival contenders it judges “republican”: that is, who do not belong to the political extremes. In a two-round election, this would reduce the chances of a split anti-RN vote in the second-round run-off. Parties have until June 16th to register candidates, and there has already been much fractious manoeuvring ahead of that deadline. The point, ultimately, for Mr Macron is to try to broaden parliamentary representation among those parties that might be willing to contemplate German-style coalition talks with Renaissance. For the president, if the political left is split up along the way, so much the better.

Yet it is far from clear that coalition talks, which have gone nowhere in the past, would be any more successful this time. And the real risk for Mr Macron is that such discussions may not turn his party’s fortunes around. If anything, Renaissance and its friends are set to lose seats, possibly in spectacular fashion. An early poll suggested that the vote would produce a hung parliament, and that the RN could even triple the 88 seats (out of 577) that it now holds. If so, Mr Macron would be obliged to invite Ms Le Pen’s party to form a government. She says she would put Mr Bardella forward as prime minister.

Such a prospect, which once belonged to the realm of fantasy and dread, is now being taken seriously. In a two-round election, it will be harder for Ms Le Pen’s party to win seats than in the single-round European vote, based on proportional representation. Yet her party came top in the Euro-poll in a staggering 93% of French towns and villages. Moreover, on the nationalist right, party allegiances are in flux. In a dramatic moment on June 11th, and to the consternation of most of his colleagues, Eric Ciotti, head of the centre-right Republicans, announced that his party would team up with the RN. The party’s bureau then met, and expelled him. But the cordon sanitaire that has for decades warded off such pacts is clearly fraying.

On the left, another unholy alliance has re-emerged. It brings together the four parties that once made up NUPES, a grouping forged by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left firebrand. The constituent parties—Unsubmissive France, the Communists, Greens and Socialists—disagree about nuclear power, NATO, the European Union and much else. They are united by a visceral dislike of Mr Macron. His best hope is that those on the moderate left will not be able to stomach voting for candidates now tied to such an alliance.

All of which has spooked the markets. By midday on June 10th the Paris CAC 40 had lost 2% of its value, and the share prices of France’s largest banks dropped by up to 9%. Even within Mr Macron’s party, officials sound a sombre note. One deputy says he has not been sleeping well. A minister confides that he is “very worried”.

Back in 1997, Jacques Chirac, then the president, dissolved parliament in the hope of shoring up his majority, which had been weakened by widespread strikes and protests two years earlier. Instead, the opposition Socialists swept into power, and Mr Chirac was forced into an uncomfortable “cohabitation” for five years. This may be why even Gabriel Attal, Mr Macron’s 35-year-old prime minister, tried to talk him out of calling the election. Another party figure calls the decision “crazy”.

Mr Macron certainly knows his history. But he is also often convinced that he can defy precedent, and pull off things that others cannot. “I’m an incurable optimist,” he declared three days after dissolving parliament, urging the French not to cede to “the spirit of defeat”. The French president may even be gambling that the demands of government might expose to voters the incompetence of the RN, and undermine its appeal ahead of the next presidential election, in 2027. That may be wishful thinking. Either way, Mr Macron’s legacy, as well as his credibility, is now on the line. ■

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