Sarkozy slams Macron’s call for snap elections, warns of ‘chaos’

5 months ago 12

France’s centre-right former president Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out against current President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly following his crushing defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National in the European elections.

As a result of Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly on the day of the counting of votes in the European elections, French citizens will have the chance to vote for a new configuration of the national parliament on 30 June and 7 July, with the winning party getting to choose the new prime minister.

In the event of a Rassemblement National (RN) win, the party has already announced that Jordan Bardella, the party’s leading candidate in the EU elections, will head the government.

However, not everyone can get behind Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly.

“This dissolution represents a major risk for the country and for the president,” Sarkozy, president between 2007 and 2012 and currently a member of the right-wing Répulicains party, told Le Journal du Dimanche in an interview published on Sunday.

“For the country, already fractured, because it could plunge it into chaos from which it will have the greatest difficulty emerging,” he added.

When asked about Bardella, Sarkozy said that while he “knows how to master his language,” he will have to “make up for a lack of experience since he has never been in a position to manage anything,” adding that “he’s under 30.”

Sarkozy also warned that “the relevance of the RN’s economic choices is clearly a matter of deep concern”.

Commenting on Eric Ciotti’s decision to ally his party, Les Républicains, with Le Pen’s Rassemblement National – a decision that led to his party ousting him as leader, although this was quickly overturned by a Paris court on Friday night – Sarkozy said Ciotti should have first consulted the party’s members by organising a vote.

“The question would then have been decided calmly and indisputably. There would have been no denial of democracy”, the former French president added.

(Clara Bauer-Babef | Euractiv.fr)