Le Pen’s National Rally defeated Macron’s centrists by a nearly one-point margin and both won 23 seats in the European Parliament.France’s far-right leader pulled off a narrow victory over President Emmanuel Macron and is now seeking big concessions from the government.
Far-right party leader Marine Le Pen said after Sunday night’s voting that “at a minimum” Macron must dissolve the French parliament and put in place a voting system more favourable to her party at home.
Le Pen’s National Rally defeated Macron’s centrists by a nearly one-point margin and both won 23 seats in the European Parliament.
Macron “put his weight into this battle,” she said, noting his unusual campaigning for his party.
Le Pen swore she wasn’t seeking revenge for her loss to Macron in the 2017 presidential race.
French government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye says president Emmanuel Macron won’t dissolve the lower house of the French parliament after the far-right National Rally won the most of votes at the European Parliament elections.
Official results in France showed Marine Le Pen’s party had 5.3 million votes overall, compared with 5.1 million for Macron’s movement.
Speaking on French channel BFM TV on Monday, Ndiaye said the results did not trigger “a political crisis,” adding that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe “has all the confidence of the president.”
Le Pen said the result “confirms the new nationalist-globalist division” in France, adding that Macron “has no other choice but, at the very least, to dissolve the National Assembly.”
