France’s far right won a commanding victory on Sunday in the country’s elections for the European Parliament, according to projections based on preliminary results, dealing a heavy blow to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, which came in a distant second.
The projections, which are generally reliable, gave the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen and her wildly popular protégé Jordan Bardella, about 31.5 percent of the vote, to about 15.2 percent for Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party. It became the leading party in France by some distance.
The results did not come as a surprise, but they were a blunt disavowal of Mr. Macron, who had repeatedly cast the vote as crucial for the future of a “mortal” European Union that has seen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bring war to its doorstep. Given France’s important place at the heart of the 27-nation European Union, the result was a significant sign of a strong rightward drift in Europe, driven mainly by concerns over uncontrolled immigration.
“This was a verdict against which there is no appeal,” Mr. Bardella declared. “France has demonstrated its desire for change.” He called Mr. Macron a “weakened” leader and admonished him to take account of the vote by dissolving the National Assembly and calling new legislative elections.
Mr. Macron, who has said he will address the country later Sunday, appears neither inclined nor obligated to do so, even if the scale of his defeat has left him a reduced figure.
After decades on the fringes, it is now clear that the anti-immigrant French far right is firmly ensconced in mainstream politics, with Mr. Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the National Rally party, as its fresh new face. His party won no less than double the vote of Mr. Macron’s.
Whether Mr. Bardella might supplant Marine Le Pen as leader, even before the next presidential election, in 2027, when Mr. Macron is term-limited, is now an open question. Ms. Le Pen has been the National Rally’s perennial presidential candidate and perennial loser since 2012.
The party has traditionally fared well in European parliamentary elections, where 360 million voters in 27 nations across the European Union tend to vote their anger and frustration as there are few direct domestic consequences. It led in voting percentages in 2014, and again in 2019, when Ms. Le Pen’s party edged out Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party with 23 percent of the vote, to 22 percent.
But its performance on Sunday, when the abstention rate in France dropped compared with the last election, was of an altogether different order. With close to a third of the vote, the National Rally has asserted a pivotal place in French politics.
This victory, an embarrassment for mainstream parties in general, although the center-left Socialist Party showed some signs of revival, reflected a widespread feeling in France that immigration is uncontrolled at the borders of the European Union, and that Mr. Macron has taken a lax approach to lawlessness and violence.
Mr. Bardella campaigned insistently on a supposed loss of French identity, alluding repeatedly to the danger of the country’s “disappearance.” He also attacked “punitive” ecological measures, often dictated by the European Union, that, he insisted, makes life unaffordable.
Mild-mannered but charismatic and media savvy, Mr. Bardella is in many ways the living embodiment of Ms. Le Pen’s yearslong efforts to normalize her party. A clean-cut, strong-jawed TikTok star, he never raises his voice.
Yet his positions on issues like immigration and crime are no less extreme than Ms. Le Pen’s. The difference for a significant number of voters is that he does not share the Le Pen family name — and its unsavory association with the racist and antisemitic roots of the party’s founding as the National Front, by Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 1972.
Renaissance spent months languishing in second place in the polls, far behind the National Rally. The top Renaissance candidate, Valérie Hayer, a little-known lawmaker at the European Parliament, left voters cold. The campaign appeared lackluster, and attempts by Mr. Macron to revive it, including through a major speech in April on the future of Europe, backfired.
The National Rally made the election an anti-Macron referendum. It worked.
Mr. Macron has often presented himself as a bulwark against the far right — twice defeating Ms. Le Pen in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections — and his inability to stem the wave of support for Mr. Bardella on Sunday seems certain to unsettle his remaining supporters. Seven years in office have taken a toll on Mr. Macron, who upended French politics when he burst on the scene to become president at the age of 39.
National political parties run in their respective countries for the European Parliament, but they join like-minded groups once they gain seats. The National Rally is a leading member of Identity and Democracy, a deeply anti-establishment group with hard-line anti-migrant views. Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party is a core member of Renew Europe, a small, liberal group.
In television debates, Mr. Bardella’s opponents liked to point out that he was hardly a diligent legislator at the European Parliament. But little of that criticism seemed to stick with voters, many of whom cared far more about his frontal attack on Mr. Macron than his meager track record in Brussels or Strasbourg, where the European Parliament is headquartered.
In his brief victory speech, Mr. Bardella was measured and firm. “With this historic score for our party, French citizens have expressed their attachment to France, its sovereignty, its identity, its security and its prosperity,” he said, calling on Mr. Macron to rethink immigration policy, protect farmers and defend purchasing power across the country.
“He was impeccable, as usual,” said Nadège Moia, 45, a sales representative who was at the party’s victory gathering in a conference center east of Paris.
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