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Macron’s own goal could put Europe under stress
The French President’s misguided move to call snap elections may backfire spectacularly.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has sacrificed his political allies in an utterly unnecessary electoral gamble., says the writer.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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“He has thrown us under a bus.” This is how a senior minister in France’s outgoing government is said to have reacted when he first heard that President Emmanuel Macron had dissolved his country’s Parliament and called snap elections three years earlier than required by law.
And so it is turning out. For, with only days left before the first round of the French parliamentary elections on June 30, all opinion polls indicate that Mr Macron – who took this gambit in the hope of saving the country from extremist politics – will end up with precisely what he sought to avoid: a horrible choice between a government of the far right and one of the far left, promising years of future political bickering.
