The far right is on the doorstep of power. Fueled by political mistrust, rejection of immigration and rising security concerns, the wave is not unique to France, but for a country that thought itself better protected than other democracies by its republican tradition, its institutions and its two-round majority voting system, the shock is immense. Elected in her stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont in Pas-de-Calais, with 58% of votes cast, Marine Le Pen appears to be the big winner of the first round of legislative elections on Sunday, June 30. Excluding the votes for her allies backed by Eric Ciotti, her party, the Rassemblement National (RN), won 29.3% of the votes cast, or 9.4 million votes, 1.3 million more than in the first round of the 2022 presidential election, a historic level that can in no way be attributed to a supposed casualness of less politicized voters: Far from sulking at the polls, voters this time turned out in droves. The high turnout, 20 points higher than two years ago, shows that all camps were mobilized, in the wake of a dissolution that will go down as one of the most irresponsible acts ever committed by a French president exercising his powers.

In 2017, Macron claimed to neutralize the far right by embodying a "progressive" camp born from the wreckage of France's two main historic parties, the Socialists and the conservative Les Républicans (LR). Seven years on, he appears to have accelerated the RN's march to power. The "clarification" operation he launched in the aftermath of the European elections, disastrous for the ruling powers, resulted on Sunday evening in the destruction of the governing coalition, which finds itself relegated from first to third place, far behind the RN and the united left. The result is an unprecedented weakening of presidential authority at a key moment in French history: Disavowed by the French on his mode of governance and on his policies, Macron has also lost control over the party he gave birth to and over the personalities in his camp who claim to succeed him. Never has he appeared so isolated and so disparaged.

The situation is made all the more dangerous by the fact that there are barely six days left to avoid the worst – preventing the RN from gaining an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale. Only the formation of a powerful republican front can stand in the way of a party which, despite all its concealments, remains highly dangerous because its policies are based on "national preference," a concept that amounts to classifying people according to where they come from.

Macron's written statement early Sunday evening calling for "a broad, clearly democratic and republican rally for the second round," at a time when the number of three-way runoffs skyrocketed, is in keeping with the logic of the traditional "republican front." Weighed down by the weight of the personal defeat suffered by the president, it did not, however, take on the solemn tone that the circumstances dictated. True to its longstanding fight against the far right, the left, from the radical La France Insoumise (LFI) to the Socialists, did not hesitate to call for a republican front.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the outgoing governing coalition, which, drowning itself in nuances, appeared very unclear: Prime Minister Gabriel Attal declared that in the second round "not a single vote should go to the Rassemblement National," but the addendum from former prime minister Edouard Philippe, according to whom not a single vote should "go to the candidates of the Rassemblement National or those of La France Insoumise," confused the game of withdrawals of thrid-place candidates. Driven by the same mistrust of LFI, another Macron ally François Bayrou declared himself in favor of a case-by-case approach. The award for indignity goes to the LR branch not rallied to the RN, which refused to give any withdrawal or voting instructions, drawing an equal line between the far right and what it called the "far left."

In view of the gravity of the situation, this kind of complacency is unforgivable: It contributes to trivializing the vote in favor of the far right, at a time when there is very little time left to attempt to build the ultimate wake-up, by calling on all the values of the French Republic. On Sunday, July 7, what is at stake is not just a transfer of power – it may be a tipping point.