“I don’t want to hand the keys of power” to Marine Le Pen, says Macron

PARIS  — French President Emmanuel Macron said his controversial decision to call snap parliamentary elections in France was a last-ditch attempt to keep the far right out of power.

“Everybody sees the flood waters of the far right rising. Everybody is saying [Macron] will hand them the keys of power. I don’t want to give them the keys to power in 2027,” he said, referring to the date of the next presidential election in France.

Macron called a legislative election on Sunday night after the far-right National Rally trounced his liberal Renaissance party in the EU election by a margin of 31.4 percent to 14.6 percent.

“Two thirds of the French want a dissolution [of the National Assembly] … With 50 percent of the people voting for the extremes, I could not have done nothing. People would have said ‘he’s completely disconnected,'” Macron said during a press conference on Wednesday meant to kick off his party’s campaign for the election.

Macron made an impassioned bid for centrists, democrats and pro-Europeans to unite to beat the far-right in the vote at the end of the month. He also viciously attacked the Les Républicains party Wednesday after its leader, Éric Ciotti, said he was open to an alliance with the National Rally.

“Since Sunday evening, the masks are falling, and there’s a battle between those who are looking for election gains and those who are fighting for France,” Macron told dozens of journalists gathered in Paris.

Eric Clotti | David Nivière/AFP via Gettty Images

While the French president is gambling he can stem the surge of the nationalist, anti-immigration right in a national election, his rivals are testing the waters for a united front.

“The right is striking up an alliance with the far right…the conservatives… are turning their back on the heritage of [former presidents] De Gaulle, Chirac and Sarkozy,” Macron said.

On Tuesday, Ciotti revealed he had been in talks with Marine Le Pen to form a potential alliance aimed at defeating Renaissance.

“We need to unite our forces,” Ciotti said.

Macron criticized those efforts, noting that the conservative right and the far right have contradictory economic policies and opposite views on the pension reform that sparked unrest across the country last year.

The French president also lashed out at the left, as an alliance of the far-left France Unbowed, the Socialist Party and other political groupings appears to be reemerging, after breaking up over Israel’s war in Gaza.

It’s the economy, stupid

Macron defended his action on the economic front — including the pension reform— and warned that both the far right and the far left would bring France to the brink of financial disaster, just as markets are increasingly worried about the ongoing political crisis.

“The two extreme blocs [propose] an impoverishment of the country,” Macron said.

The French president warned that the National Rally’s proposals would be a major blow for French finances, as they would cost about €100 billion per year, according to one estimate. He also accused the far right of giving up on green policies and of calling into question recent reforms that made France attractive for foreign investors.

Macron then slammed the far- eft for proposing an “unreasonable taxation” level, for not fully supporting nuclear energy and for proposing green policies that are not “credible” and would lead to a “weakening of the country.”