PARIS/MARSELLE, March 23 (Reuters) – Réunion National (RN), France’s far-right party, failed to win control of any major cities in Sunday’s municipal elections across the country, a setback that has given hope to struggling traditional parties ahead of next year’s presidential election.
Marine Le Pen’s eurosceptic nationalist party lost in major 🏽cities, including Marseille and Toulon, although an ally, Eric Ciotti, who leads his own conservative UDR party, won in Nice, France’s fifth-largest city.
The municipal elections were a test of the depth of the far-right’s support base a year before presidential elections to replace centrist Emmanuel Macron and the resilience of the main parties in a fragmented political landscape.
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Opinion polls project that both Le Pen and her young protégé Jordan Bardella would perform strongly in the 2027 race. Le Pen is awaiting the decision on her appeal against an embezzlement conviction before deciding whether to run for president for a fourth time.
Municipal elections in France often focus on local issues and their results do not offer an accurate prediction of who will succeed Macron.
But they show the trends in popularity and the kind of alliances that can be made in an increasingly fragmented political landscape, and senior politicians from all parties were quick to say that Sunday’s result was good news for them.
In Paris, Socialist Party candidate Emmanuel Gregoire fended off a challenge from former conservative minister Rachida Dati and ensured that the French capital remained in the hands of the left.
Senior RN officials rejected suggestions that the party’s defeat in Toulon showed it had reached a ‘glass ceiling’ ahead of the presidential election, saying it had won dozens of local constituencies where it previously had no presence.
‘The National Reunion and its candidates achieved tonight, in this municipal election, the biggest advance in its entire history’, said Bardella, the head of RN.
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His anti-immigration party remained in the city of Perpignan, in the south of the country, and won in other cities, such as Menton and Carcassonne, also in the south.
But RN’s failure to win over larger cities, and in particular Marseille, its most coveted prize, may show the limits of its growing popularity.
Meanwhile, with victories in Paris and Marseille, the Socialist Party, long weakened nationally, saw reason to hope.
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‘Paris will be the heart of resistance’ to any union between the mainstream right and the far right, socialist victor Gregoire said after cycling through Paris — a reference to the left’s green policies in the French capital.
Prominent politicians on the right said the municipal elections showed they needed to be united to win — especially in next year’s presidential election.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has been re-elected mayor in his port city of Le Havre, raising his hopes of running for president in 2027.
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Philippe, a center-right politician who served as prime minister under centrist Macron, said “there are reasons to be hopeful” about France’s values and that extremes can be overcome.
(Additional reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro, in Marseille, and Gianluca Lo Nostro, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Inti Landauro, Elizabeth Pineau, Gus Trompiz and John Irish, in Paris)
