EU elections 2024 live: Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections after huge far-right gains

Because delaying mean’s momentum against him will continue to grow

You wait it out if you think there’s no chance for you or you hope it fades

That's be cause what u/balinares forgot to mention is that Macron has been steadily giving the far right his (barely disguized) support by leading policies that are very well aligned with far right ideas, and he has continuously portrayed lefists as crazy. Oh and he also kept setting up debates between his party and the far right leaders, putting them in some sort of 'legitimate' position (like there's been a debate between our prime minister and the head of the far right list for these election, there was absolutely no reason to do it, but hey who give a crap about fairplay uh?). Oh and also we now have our own fox news (cnews here), broadcasting on a public network, but not respecting there duty to remain neutral. But no wonders why, since these media are owned by a far right billionaire.

TLDR: Macron carefully set the conditions for the far right to win these election by portraying them as the only opposition, and now he's all whiny that surprise surprise, the far right is aslo far ahead.

I know right, we'd been waiting for the UK Tory party to realise that since 2022.

Sorry, I should have been clearer: his party scored badly in the EU elections, so he lost credibility in France and is calling snap elections in France. I'll edit my comment above to clarify.

No, it isn't. His party "lost" in the EU parliamentary elections, not those of the national parliament. It's a very bold and bizarre strategy.

No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.

But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters "hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me".

Basically Macron is saying "You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win". It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).

As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.

The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.

Technically it is "democratic" because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor "politicking".

PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.

This is somewhat analogous to the way midterm elections are treated in the US, and a decent comparison would be when Mitch McConnell blocked Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Justice towards the end of his second term.

The Democrats lost seats in Congress during that midterm season, which the Republicans used to claim that the American people had no faith in the Democrats and therefore no faith in Obama. They then used this claim as an excuse to block the Democrats ability to govern.

In this case, the people of France have voted for another party to represent their interests internationally to the EU parliament.

Macron will now face claims within the French government that the people voting against them in the EU elections indicates that they have no faith in his party's leadership and that will make it difficult for him to govern.

With this move, calling an election early, they will have a clear indication of who the French people wish to lead them internally and, if they reelect Macron's party, can dismiss the claims from opposition parties that the people don't trust them.

It's worth mentioning that many governments around the world don't have fixed election cycles the way you do in the US. Instead many countries have an end date by which the election must occur, but a new election can be called at any time before that date if the government thinks it's necessary. A similar thing is currently happening in the UK where the Conservative Party has called an election for early July, even though the election didn't have to take place until late January 2025.