Emmanuel Macron gathered all the lights on him on Sunday night but for a negative reason. The landslide victory of his rival Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party forced him to call early parliamentary elections later this month. A decision that is a huge surprise for the country and at the same time a huge risk for Macron himself, according to the BBC.

The far-right party won around 32% of the vote, more than double Macron’s Renaissance party, prompting the French president to call for the dissolution of parliament. The election will be held in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, just a few weeks before the Paris Olympics.

Macron made this dramatic and surprising decision in a televised speech from the Elysee Palace, an hour after the polls closed and after 28-year-old Jordan Bardela, leader of the National Rally, asked Macron to call parliamentary elections. “I have heard your message,” the president told French voters, “and I will not let it go unanswered.”

Two years into his second term as president, Macron does not have the required majority in the French parliament, and although these elections in theory have nothing to do with national politics, he has clearly decided that continuing in office without a new popular consultation would give excessive pressure on the system.

Marine Le Pen, on the other hand, who has twice been defeated by Macron in presidential elections, immediately hit back, saying her party is “ready to exercise power, ready to put an end to mass immigration”.

But Emmanuel Macron for sure he could have reacted differently.He could ignore the numbers and Jordan Bardela’s call and carry on as normal, explaining away the far-right’s massive victory as a European aberration that would be corrected in the next national election. He could focus on the upcoming European soccer championship in Germany and especially the Paris Olympics to keep people’s minds off politics for a few months. But one can only assume that Macron has long sensed the doom who was coming for his party and had planned his answer in advance.

Certainly the result was an almost exact copy of the polls, so he would have had plenty of time to consider his options. Without a majority, getting any bill through the National Assembly is a struggle. With most of the country now so clearly against him, any new bill – for example the upcoming budget – could prove explosive. So his move might have been a one-way street after all.

Certainly Macron is hoping that his party can fight back in the upcoming elections while also hoping that the other parties will do better. But he must appreciate that the odds favor another victory for the National Rally party. Perhaps, not as sweeping as Sunday’s result, but enough to become the largest party in parliament. And thus France could very well have Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardela as prime minister.