In Sunday’s European Parliament election, Le Pen’s nationalist and populist party received twice as many votes as Macron’s globalist centrist governing group. This led Macron to dissolve the parliament right away and hold new elections in France in an attempt to reclaim power for the balance of his presidential term.

Leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, grabbed the stage at her organization’s election night celebration in Paris just after President Macron said he was calling early elections to support his stance. She declared that her group was prepared to contest the snap election.

Praying that the outcome would finally and completely end “the cruel globalist intermission that has caused the people of the world to suffer,” she hailed the rise of right-wing parties throughout Europe as the “dawn of a new day dawning for all the nations and peoples of Europe.” It also validated the RN’s status as the “great force for change for France,” according to Le Pen.

At the Paris protest, she stated:

“Dear countrymen, ladies and gentlemen. The French have spoken, and this historic election demonstrates that the people always prevail when they cast ballots. In order to prepare the public for the upcoming elections in a few weeks, the President has announced the dissolution of the National Assembly. This is something I can only applaud; if the French electorate continues to trust us in these forthcoming national elections, we are prepared and ready to use our authority. In order to protect the interests of the French people, we are prepared to rebuild the nation. We’re prepared to stop the migrant wave. We are ready to prioritize enhancing the strength of the economy. We are also ready to initiate the process of reindustrialization for the nation. “To be clear, we are prepared to restore France and set the nation right.”

According to Le Monde, Le Pen and Bardella have achieved the greatest outcome for any French political party in the European elections in forty years, with RN receiving 31.5% of the vote. Furthermore, Marion Marechal Le Pen, the niece of Jean Le Pen, who garnered an additional five and a half percent of the vote, led a rival party that helped split the right-populist support to some extent.

Following a breathtaking showing in Sunday’s European Parliament elections, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party appears destined to become the biggest single party in the European Union. Voting for the next European Parliament began on Thursday and ended on Sunday night. According to exit polls, right-wing parties did well, though perhaps not as well as some polls had predicted given the narrow margin of victory throughout the continent.

However, there were notable national disparities, with France emerging as possibly the most notable of them all. The Ipsos exit poll showed that President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party’s European grouping was trailing behind the front-running RN. Le Pen’s RN, headed by fellow party member and European Parliament member Jordan Bardella, received more than twice as many votes as Renaissance, with 31.5 percent of the total cast as opposed to Renaissance’s 14.7%.

According to the exit poll, the RN will gain 30 members in the European Parliament, whereas Macron will only win 14. This is a noteworthy figure that, if exit polls are generally accurate throughout Europe, would establish Le Pen’s RN as the biggest party in the European Parliament.

On Sunday night, President Macron quickly responded to this crushing blow to his authority by declaring he was calling for an early election later this month and dissolving the French Parliament. If Macron wins that vote, he can confidently assert that the country has given him the mandate to serve as president for the remainder of his term. But if he lost that, he would, at most, be a lame duck and have to wait until April 2027.

Macron will have to take a huge risk, and he hopes that the French people will view elections for their significant national parliament differently than they do for the far-off and insignificant European Parliament in Brussels. This effect was particularly evident in the years that Britain was still a member of the European Union. Nigel Farage’s Brexit and UKIP, which were euroskeptic parties, were significant vote-getters for Brussels but had difficulty gaining traction in Westminster.

Macron might find it difficult to change the narrative, though, as Le Pen’s RN has momentum going into tonight’s scheduled first round of the snap election, which is only 21 days away. However, the French daily Le Figaro claims that he has already made a decent effort. The President broke the news in a speech on Sunday night, stating that he wanted to “let the sovereign people speak” and that “I have chosen to give you the choice of our parliamentary future again by voting… [this is a] serious, difficult decision, but above all, it is an act of trust.”