Monday morning on a Pentecost holiday at Montargis station has rarely been so eventful. Security forces were systematically checking bags on the platform, sirens were wailing outside and, stepping off the morning train from Paris, the reason for this tense atmosphere quickly became clear: Sharply dressed far-right leaders were rubbing shoulders with radical-left lawmakers and anti-racist left-wing activists. Seeking a morale booster, the far right was gathering to celebrate its electoral gains exactly one year earlier, in the European elections. Meanwhile, the local left, made up of grassroots organizations and political groups, tested its ability to resist Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National's (RN, far-right party) growing influence in the region. Law enforcement feared clashes, which ultimately did not materialize.

Almost nonexistent just a few years ago in the Loiret department of central France, where Montargis is located, the RN won 38% of the vote here in the first round of the 2024 parliamentary elections, before the "republican front," the alliance of the other parties, slowed its momentum. It did win one seat, via Thomas Ménagé, a former sovereignist who has become a valuable member of the party. In his district, the RN found a field to rent a few kilometers south of Montargis and, at the expense of the European Parliament, invited its allies – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and the leader of the Spanish party Vox, Santiago Abascal. According to its own estimates, it brought in more than 5,000 party activists from surrounding local branches on a fleet of buses. The aim was to remind supporters that on June 9, 2024, the RN achieved the best electoral result in its history, a success overshadowed by President Emmanuel Macron's immediate triggering of snap parliamentary elections.

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