After the dissolution of the French National Assembly by President Macron the day after the European elections and the announcement of parliamentary elections, the candidates are under pressure.

Trapped in the time limits imposed by Emmanuel Macron by dissolving the French National Assembly the day after the European elections, the candidates for the parliamentary elections are racing to catch up. Everything must be finished within three weeks, June 30 for the first round, July 7 for the second.

On Monday, the pre-election campaign officially began

Everyone is stunned and especially the MPs who lost their seats, they try to figure out what went wrong and most importantly what they should avoid in their campaign to win again. It is clear that what they are ultimately avoiding, and which has been erased from posters and panels, even in the “Macronites”, the electoral camp of the president, is the picture of Emmanuel Macron, which is now considered damaging.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is in charge of the campaign, found this out unwittingly on Monday, when a Macron voter surprised him in the street by saying: “I’m going to shake your hand because you’re good and you’ve done a lot of good in Education. But you should tell the president to shut up. (…) Understand me, the president has crushed us. Come on and good luck to you, not to him up there.’ The video in question has been doing the rounds on social media.

Upheaval of the political field by Macron

Some years have passed since a young 38-year-old minister, a former banker, named Emmanuel Macron, find and display Socialist President Francois Hollande, upended the political landscape in France, even forcing Hollande’s mentor not to seek a second term. The ambitious 38-year-old abandoned the boat of the Social Democrats and decided to swim alone for the 2017 presidential election, achieving an unprecedented triumph.

His idea was to replace the traditional divide between Right and Left with another: between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics or between progressives and conservatives or nationalists. This political venture has worked in small steps for the past 7 years. We saw it in the reshuffles he made by choosing prime ministers or ministers on the right and left. It was the famous “En même temps”, which in Greek translates as “At the same time”. Over the years, a situation was formed, which he also fueled, highlighting the Far Right of Marine Le Pen as his main opponent.

The Left, for its part, was anxious to bring together its scattered members (Socialists, Environmentalists, Communists and Mélenchon’s Disobedients), to end up in a Union – inspired by Mélenchon – called NUPES, which often proved ineffective. That’s why many people spoke of an “irreconcilable Left”.

The Democratic Right of the Republicans had shrunk dramatically, following Valerie Pekres’ humiliating 4.78% in the 2022 presidential primary.

The surprise came from the Left

In the last European elections, the Right and the Left remained behind, with the Macronites and the Far Right leading the way. With the dissolution of the Parliament, Emmanuel Macron wanted, with the method of surprise, to achieve the final blow in the great political project.

In the end, however, things did not develop as he expected: What he did not foresee, and which surprised him too, was the reconciliation of the parties of the “irreconcilable” Left and the creation of the “Popular Front” bloc. Apparently, he bet, and he is still betting today, that there will be approaches to create a new center of gravity based on the Macronites and harmonized left and right with social democrats, outside the Popular Front, and the democratic republicans, outside Cioti and the National Rally, capable to face the hard block of the National Rally of the Far Right. A new block, an enlarged center capable of building a coalition to create a majority to prevent far-right Jordan Bardela from becoming prime minister.

Bardella is afraid, Hollande is present

For the time being the landscape is murky for the French who feel silent tremors from all sides: The hitherto courageous Bardella, with the infinite selfies, shows that he is starting to fear and every day we have a setback in his program, such as for pensions or VAT, with the excuse that it is early and there are other priorities. Data, which the Macronites exploit by pointing out the unreliability of the Far Right. “Bardella fears for his abilities,” Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday.

From the other side, the People’s Front is on its way, in fact, after obtaining the candidacy of a former president, François Hollande, in Correz. Although for many “a president cannot do such a thing”, he considered that he made the decision because “the situation is more serious than ever, with the Far Right closer to power than ever” and added: “I have no personal pursuit”, thus preempting the evil spirits who would like to see some trace of revenge towards his former 38-year-old protégé who in 2017 forced him to withdraw from another presidential candidacy. The Macronites have declared that they will not oppose their own candidate in the Korez constituency, thus closing the circle.