Some European leaders reacted to French elections results with a sigh of relief on Sunday, July 7, after the left defeated the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), with no group winning an absolute majority.
Pre-election polling had put the RN in first, raising fears for the European Union’s future direction with an anti-immigration, eurosceptic party potentially controlling the government of a key member.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Sunday hailed France’s “rejection of the far right.” France opted for “a social left that tackles the people’s problems with serious and brave policies”, the socialist premier wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Sanchez welcomed the shock result alongside this week’s UK general election where the centre-left Labour party achieved a landslide victory over the Conservatives. He said both countries “have said YES to progress and social progress and NO to going back on rights and freedoms. You don’t make deals or govern with the far right.”
Meanwhile, a senior member of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party said that France had “avoided the worst.” French President Emmanuel Macron, who stunned the country by calling the snap vote last month after the far right trounced his centrist alliance in EU elections, was “politically weakened,” Nils Schmid said. “The worst is avoided, the RN cannot form a governing majority,” Schmid, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) foreign policy spokesman in the German parliament, told the Funke press group. Macron still “retains a central role” with no party claiming an outright majority, Schmid added.
Parties must show an ‘ability to compromise’
Forming a government will be “tricky” and parties must show “flexibility” and an “ability to compromise,” said Schmid, whose country has long been used to drawn-out negotiations leading to seemingly unwieldy coalitions. Scholz’s government is made up of his SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP. But French politics is unaccustomed to such arrangements.
Reacting to the results on Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the result would lead to “disappointment” in Russia and “relief” in Ukraine.