Key Points
- Early predictions from France’s parliamentary elections showed no party held enough seats to form a majority.
- A left-wing coalition is in the lead, with the president’s centrist alliance in second and the right-wing RN third.
- French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has offered his resignation following the early results of the snap election.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal says he will hand his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, adding he will carry out his functions as long as required.
France was on course for a hung parliament in the second round of the country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, with the leftist New Popular Front alliance unexpectedly taking the top spot ahead of the far right, in a major upset that was set to bar Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) from running the government.
The result would mark a huge setback for the far right, which opinion surveys ahead of the vote had projected would win comfortably before the left and centrist alliances cooperated by pulling scores of candidates from three-way races to build a unified anti-RN vote.
The RN was set to come third, according to pollsters’ projections based on early results, with French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance Renaissance coming in third.
No party holds enough seats to form a majority.
In his first reaction, RN’s leader Jordan Bardella called the cooperation between anti-RN forces, known as the “republican front”, a “disgraceful alliance” that he said would paralyse France.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party failed to achieve an expected majority of the votes. Source: ABACA / Lafargue Raphael/PA
The election will leave parliament divided in three big groups with hugely different platforms and no tradition at all of working together.
The vote was also a humiliation for Macron, who called the snap election after his ticket was trounced in European Parliament elections last month.
The leftist alliance, which gathers the hard left, the Socialists and Greens, who have long been at odds with each other, was forecast to win between 172 and 215 seats out of 577, according to the pollsters’ projections.
Macron’s centrist alliance, which he founded to underpin his first presidential run in 2017, was projected to be narrowly second with 150-180 seats.
The RN was predicted to get 115 to 155 seats.
These projections are usually reliable.
French PM Gabriel Attal to resign on Monday morning
Attal said the far right could not form an absolute majority following Sunday’s elections and that France was embarking on a new era.
“Tonight, the (political) extremes have no absolute majority, thanks to our determination and the strength of our values. We (centrists) have three times more MPs than were predicted at the start of this campaign,” Attal said.
“Being prime minister was the honour of my life. This evening the political group that I represent no longer has a majority and tomorrow morning I will submit my resignation to the president.”
