PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s reelection as mayor of Le Havre is positioning him as the leading candidate to take on the far right in next year’s presidential election. The contest was an important test for the center-right politician, as he had conditioned his bid for the Elysée on securing another term leading the industrial port city, which in the past tended to lean left. A poll released ahead of the vote showed Philippe in real danger of losing to a Communist challenger — an outcome that would have scuttled his plans to run for president. But Philippe shut down skeptics by winning the runoff by more than six points. Then a Toluna Harris Interactive survey conducted online just after polls closed in the nationwide municipal elections showed Philippe on track for a second-place finish in the first round of the 2027 presidential contest, though still trailing National Rally President Jordan Bardella by 17 points. Philippe looks primed to come out the other end of this make-or-break moment stronger. Building momentum now could help separate Philippe from the rest of a very crowded field of candidates in the race for the Elysée, though there’s still more than a year to go. “Everything sort of starts today,” Nathalie Loiseau, a MEP from Philippe’s Horizons party and one of its heavyweights, told POLITICO. “There are reasons to hope.” Philippe, who was the first of the center-right contenders to declare his presidential bid, is already rolling out campaign events, with April 12 bookmarked for a large-scale rally in Paris, according to two party officials — though Loiseau declined to confirm the event. “Le Havre’s people know that there is reason for hope when all people of good will come together … and reject the extremes and their simplistic solutions,” Philippe said in his victory speech Sunday from Le Havre. The politician’s strong performance in the first round and his comfortable win in the runoff drew a sigh of relief from his allies on Sunday — and led some of his most prominent rivals to publicly acknowledge his front-runner status. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, himself a presidential hopeful, called on Philippe to unite centrists behind him. “He now needs to unite people [around him], for us to have an only candidate,” Darmanin said on France 2 last week. A person close to Darmanin told POLITICO that Philippe’s performance was “a bucket of cold water” for the justice minister’s presidential aspirations. EXPERIENCE VS. YOUTH France’s 2027 presidential race looks likely to be the most consequential in a decade, with the far-right National Rally consistently polling more than 15 percentage points ahead of other parties. Despite failing to pick up high-profile targets like Marseille, Nîmes and Toulon, the far right celebrated its performance Sunday. Bardella told supporters in Paris the far right had achieved the “biggest breakthrough of its history,” while his mentor Marine Le Pen said the National Rally had scored “dozens” of regional victories. The National Rally’s biggest win on Sunday came on the French Riviera, where one of its allies won Nice, France’s fifth-most-populous city. However, political watchers were quick to note that the victory was more attributable to local rightwing baron-turned-far-right-ally Eric Ciotti than to Bardella. Loiseau argued there was no National Rally “wave” in these local elections, flagging the party’s failure to achieve a decisive breakthrough in large and midsize cities. But she said the far right’s slow and steady rise, including in rural areas that used to be strongholds of moderate politics, shouldn’t be underestimated. Bardella is the National Rally’s most likely candidate next year unless Marine Le Pen successfully appeals the five-year election ban she was handed as the result of an embezzlement conviction. Bardella’s popularity has risen steadily, but he has never personally won election for local or national government. Philippe’s allies are hoping his credentials as prime minister during Emmanuel Macron’s first term and extensive background in politics will give him a decisive edge should he qualify to run against the National Rally in the 2027 runoff. Bardella’s opponents see his lack of executive-level experience as a key weakness in a presidential contest, especially as Europe is embroiled in two major international conflicts. “Edouard Philippe was a prime minister during a major crisis, which was Covid. He has an international stature,” said Loiseau. “You can imagine him facing Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. This isn’t necessarily true of everyone who is either an official candidate or would like to be a candidate.”

FRENCH FAR RIGHT CLAIMS MOMENTUM FOR PRESIDENCY AFTER LOCAL ELECTIONS Marine Le Pen’s National Rally failed to win big target cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes, but the party still thinks it has the upper hand nationwide. By CLEA CAULCUTT in Paris POLITICO illustration. The far-right National Rally may not have won the string of big target cities it was hoping for in France’s local election on Sunday, but its leaders said they had still built up a grassroots momentum that would propel them to victory in next year’s presidential contest. The 2027 presidential election is seen as a decisive moment for the EU as the Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic National Rally is the current favorite to win the race for the Elysée. This week’s municipal elections are being closely scrutinized to gauge whether Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party is still France’s predominant political force. All in all, it was a mixed night for the far right. Its biggest victory came on the Riviera, where one of its allies won Nice, France’s fifth-biggest city. The National Rally had also campaigned hard in other significant southern cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes. It performed well in all of them but was beaten into second place. The races were close in Toulon and Nîmes, and Le Pen’s party won 40 percent of the vote in Marseille — a considerable share in France’s diverse and cosmopolitan second city. Putting a positive spin on the results, the party leaders stressed that they had won numerous smaller and mid-sized cities and towns, particularly in their southern heartlands, such as Carcassonne, Agde and Menton — adding to the first-round victory in Perpignan last week. National Rally President Jordan Bardella told supporters in Paris the far right had achieved the “biggest breakthrough of its history,” and was seizing “a strong momentum” that signaled “the end of an old world running out of steam.” National Rally mayoral candidate Laure Lavalette casts her ballot during the second round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Toulon on March 22, 2026. | Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images National Rally leader Le Pen meanwhile hailed “dozens” of regional victories and “a strategy of local implantation” that was working. STRONG NATIONWIDE, WEAKER IN BIG CITIES The National Rally’s argument is that traditional parties, particularly on the left, are strong in the big cities but that these do not fully reflect the wider national political currents, which are running toward the right. In Paris, for example, the National Rally candidate and MEP Thierry Mariani scored a dismal 1.6 percent of the vote in the first round on March 15, but nationwide Bardella is still the favorite for next year’s presidential election.   A Harris Interactive poll conducted after Sunday’s municipal elections confirmed Bardella’s position as frontrunner ahead of the 2027 race. Bardella would get 35 percent of the vote in the first round of voting, the survey said, 17 points ahead of the center-right contender, former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Still, the municipal election results will definitely reignite concerns among National Rally strategists about whether they really can win in a second round next year, given that the tradition of uniting against the far right in runoffs — something that helped crush Le Pen’s presidential bids in 2017 and 2022 — was on full display on Sunday. In the Mediterranean port city of Toulon, Laure Lavalette, a high-profile National Rally politician and close Le Pen ally, had a promising start in the first round of voting, winning 42 percent of the vote, 13 points ahead of the incumbent conservative mayor Josée Massi. But in Sunday’s runoff, Massi pulled ahead, benefitting from the withdrawal of a conservative candidate. The National Rally had hoped that its swell of support could break that second-round Achilles heel in these municipal elections but this perennial electoral vulnerability — that it is the party everyone gangs up against — looks set to persist. NO RESPITE FOR BARDELLA’S RIVALS The National Rally’s rivals are certainly not dismissing the far right because of its losses in the bigger cities on Sunday. Gabriel Attal, presidential hopeful and leader of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, said Sunday’s results showed a rise of the extremes, referring to not just the far-right National Rally but also the far-left France Unbowed, which won in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. “It’s a warning signal,” he said. “More and more citizens, who voted for them, want things to change, and to change more quickly.” For the conservative Les Républicains, Sunday’s elections were bittersweet. The right won the mayoral jobs in several mid-sized cities including Limoges, Tulle, Brest and Clermont-Ferrand. In France’s fourth city, Toulouse, a former conservative Jean-Luc Moudenc saw off a far-left challenger from France Unbowed, backed by a left-wing coalition. Les Républicains leader Bruno Retailleau on Sunday claimed the right was “the Number One local political force” in France. Les Républicains candidate Rachida Dati at a campaign rally after the announcement of her defeat in the second round of the 2026 Paris municipal elections on March 22, 2026. | Ian Langsdon/AFP via Getty Images But the right was wiped out in Paris, where former Culture Minister Rachida Dati lost to the Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire. And in France’s second-largest city Lyon, the conservative candidate Jean-Michel Aulas, a former football club owner, lost by a narrow margin to the Green incumbent mayor. Retailleau sought to cast the conservatives as the force that could appeal to voters wanting to shut out the extremes, and slammed the National Rally as “demagogues.” There is “a French way, expressed by millions of fellow citizens who want neither the social chaos of [France Unbowed] or the budgetary disorder that the [National Rally’s] economic manifesto would bring about,” he said.  But the Les Républicains party has several presidential hopefuls and no clear path to decide which one will represent them in the presidential race. On Sunday, conservative heavyweights were already calling for the right to agree on a candidate against Bardella. This race for a single candidate to emerge in the middle ground is also likely to accelerate because former Prime Minister Philippe, buoyed by his victory against a strong Communist challenger in Le Havre in Normandy, will now be looking to promote his candidacy. Bardella, by contrast, simply tried to present the National Rally’s onward progression toward the Élysée as inevitable. Borrowing a phrase from former President François Mitterrand’s campaign in 1981 to end the right’s dominance in France, Bardella said the National Rally was now “a tranquil force.” “Our successes are not an achievement, but a beginning,” he said. Laura Kayali contributed reporting.

PARIS — Everyone seems to have something to celebrate after runoffs in municipal elections across France that offer an early glimpse of the trends that will define next year’s presidential election to replace the term-limited Emmanuel Macron. The far-right National Rally made gains in mid-sized and smaller towns in the French heartland. The beleaguered conservative Les Républicains held on to most of the cities it already controlled and even picked up a few new ones. Macron’s Renaissance party now controls Bordeaux and Annecy, its first two big local wins. The center-left Socialist Party kept control of Paris and other large metropolises, while the hard-left France Unbowed picked up several working-class suburbs at the heart of its electoral strategy. Not everyone can be a victor. So here’s our picks of Sunday night’s most prominent winners and losers. WINNERS Emmanuel Grégoire: The soft-spoken 48-year-old catapulted into the ranks of France’s most important politicians after being handily elected mayor of Paris and extending the Socialist Party’s 25-year rule of the capital. He now counts Zohran Mamdani and Sadiq Khan as his peers.  Edouard Philippe’s presidential campaign: Macron’s former prime minister is currently seen in polls as the most likely candidate to advance to the runoff in the race for the Elysée, where he’d likely face off against the front-running National Rally. He had conditioned his bid for the Élysée on winning reelection as mayor of his hometown, Le Havre — a condition that has now been fulfilled. Philippe will hope this victory further boosts his candidacy as his political camp begins to mull what the future will look like after a 10-year Macron presidency. Eric Ciotti: The new far-right mayor of Nice, the unofficial capital of the French Riviera, tried two years ago to strike a deal with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally as the head of the conservative Les Républicains. He locked himself in party headquarters to prevent a coup, but the farcical effort failed and he was booted from the movement. That gamble has paid off, handing him the keys to France’s fifth-largest city. His win is also a partial victory for Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party, which now has a powerful ally, but Ciotti’s triumph was also the result of a local rivalry. His advocacy for mass privatizations and admiration for Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding libertarian President Javier Milei also doesn’t align with Le Pen’s self-description as being “neither left nor right” and defense of parts of the welfare state. The National Rally: Party President Bardella said the National Rally “achieved the greatest breakthrough in its entire history.” Le Pen said it won dozens of cities. Eric Ciotti salutes his supporters in Nice after the results of the second round of France’s 2026 municipal elections on March 22, 2026. | Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images LOSERS Also the National Rally: There is also reason for the far-right party to worry. The two-round voting system once again seemed to block the National Rally from victory in key targets like Nîmes and Toulon. And after a historic showing in the first round in Marseille, the party’s candidate was handily defeated in the runoff.    Emmanuel Macron: The French president had quietly thrown his weight behind Rachida Dati, his former culture minister, and former football executive Jean-Michel Aulas in Lyon. Dati conceded defeat and Aulas lost by a razor-thin margin, but he has announced a legal challenge of the result. Left-wing alliances: The hard-left France Unbowed and the center-left Socialist Party joined forces in cities across France to defend or capture town halls. But in Toulouse and Limoges — where Socialists backed France Unbowed candidates — as well as Clermont-Ferrand and Brest — where hard-left candidates supported moderates — left-wing alliances lost. The Greens: France’s environmentalists have lost control of several cities they won during the last municipal elections, held amid the Covid-19 pandemic, including the key metropolises of Strasbourg and Bordeaux. They can take some solace for now in a narrow projected win in Lyon, France’s third-largest city, and in the Alpine city of Grenoble — both secured through local alliances with France Unbowed.  François Bayrou: The centrist former prime minister, an iconic figure in French politics, lost in his own city of Pau just months after being ousted by a parliamentary no-confidence vote in September. It could mark the end of his decades-long political career.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send federal immigration agents to airports across the country on Monday if Democrats don’t agree to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, now approaching five weeks. “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” he wrote. “Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia” would be targeted with an especially firm hand, the president wrote on Truth Social. Shortly thereafter, Trump followed up to say he plans to send ICE to airports in just days. “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” he wrote in a separate Truth Social post on Saturday. It’s his latest bid to push Democrats, who have refused to greenlight DHS funding without changes to how it carries out immigration enforcement, pointing to deadly incidents as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended en masse on major American cities. Increased callouts among TSA agents and airport staffers are expected to roil airports in the coming weeks, with major interruptions to airport procedure likely to follow. Both sides have seemingly made progress in recent days toward ending the shutdown. The White House made several concessions on immigration enforcement policies in a proposal shared with Senate Democrats on Friday. But the ICE agent masking ban Democrats are seeking in exchange for their support on a funding package remains a bridge too far, Republicans argue. Trump’s latest threat isn’t likely to make the prospects of a truce any more viable, especially given his focus on Minnesota, where tensions flared after federal immigration agents killed two protesters during a major surge of personnel in January. In a post on X following Trump’s threat, Rep. Lauren Boebert said, “The airport in Minnesota is about to be a ghost town.” The president’s threat Saturday lands squarely in the middle of a confirmation fight over his pick to run DHS, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a process that has quickly become a proxy battle over the future of ICE itself. At his hearing this week, Mullin tried to strike a more measured tone than in some of his past remarks, pledging to rein in some enforcement tactics and lower the agency’s public profile. But he repeatedly defended ICE agents amid mounting scrutiny, including backing officers involved in high-profile civilian deaths and arguing Democrats are tying the agency’s hands. Republicans — including Mullin — have instead pushed to expand ICE’s resources and authority, framing the standoff as a fight over public safety. The backdrop is the messy ouster of Kristi Noem, whose tenure was defined by aggressive deportation policies, costly PR campaigns and a series of controversies that ultimately led Trump to push her out after a bruising round of congressional hearings. The enforcement-heavy approach Trump threatened Saturday sets up a preview for what Mullin will perhaps be asked to defend — and potentially formalize — as the next head of DHS. ICE and the Transportation Security Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment from POLITICO.

PARIS — French voters head to the polls again Sunday for local runoff elections that will show which direction the wind is blowing ahead of next year’s race to replace President Emmanuel Macron. The contests are going to be tight. Many candidates who qualified for round two by scoring more than 10 percent of the vote withdrew or formed strategic alliances to give their ideological allies the best chance to win. It’s going to be spicy, but also complicated. If you want to know which cities are driven by just local issues and which ones reflect national trends like the rise of populism, read on. Here is what you need to know to follow along like a pro. WHERE SHOULD I BE WATCHING? You can ignore the more than 30,000 municipalities that were expected to choose a mayor in a single round and start with Paris. The race to lead the French capital will be a duel between Socialist Party candidate Emmanuel Grégoire and Rachida Dati of the conservative party Les Républicains. Grégoire, a protégé-turned-enemy of outgoing Mayor Anne Hidalgo, topped the first round, getting nearly 38 percent of the vote last week, well ahead of Dati’s 25 percent. But Dati managed to strike a deal with another candidate who qualified, Pierre-Yves Bournazel from the center-right Horizons. Far-right MEP Sarah Knafo, who also qualified, decided to drop out to avoid siphoning votes from Dati and is doing her utmost to ensure a candidate on the political right wins. Gr´egoire, meanwhile, chose on principle not to work with the third-place finisher, Sophia Chikirou, and her hard-left party France Unbowed. That decision could prove costly. For indicators if Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s far-right National Rally can achieve the breakthrough they’ve long sought, look to the south of France. Their ally Eric Ciotti scored 43.43 percent of the vote in Nice, the fifth-most populous city in the country, and looks primed to become the most powerful far-right mayor in France. Le Pen’s close friend Laure Lavalette came in first with 42 percent in the first round of the race to lead Toulon. But the runoff in the Mediterranean city, which is home to the French navy, will be a tough three-way race. And while the National Rally turned in a historic first-round performance in Marseille, the odds are stacked against it winning given the hard-left candidate who qualified for the runoff bowed out. His voters will likely flock to Mayor Benoît Payan, the center-left politician who won the first round against the National Rally’s Franck Allisio by a thin margin. The other major story that emerged after Sunday’s vote was the better-than-expected performance by France Unbowed, which forced the more moderate Socialist Party to team up with it despite the hard-left party’s recent controversies. Toulouse, home to European aerospace giant Airbus and France’s fourth-biggest city, could end up in the hands of France Unbowed after its candidate François Piquemal joined forces with his Socialist Party rival to oust incumbent Jean-Luc Moudenc. France Unbowed and the Socialist Party are also teaming up in Nantes, Brest and Clermont-Ferrand. While these alliances could lead to victories, their critics say they’re short-sighted and offer France Unbowed’s firebrand leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon the opportunity to build political momentum ahead of next year’s presidential election. HOW IT WILL PLAY OUT There’s a limit to what can be said before the vote. From Saturday, candidates won’t be allowed to campaign and the media won’t be able to report on polls until after the vote. Voting begins at 8 a.m. on Sunday. Polls close as early as 6 p.m. in smaller cities and as late as 8 p.m. in bigger ones like Paris and Marseille. Once the vote is over, the campaign restrictions and media blackout lifts, and pollsters will immediately release their first estimates. These aren’t exit polls like you’d see in the United States, but an analysis of early voting results that are typically representative enough to give a sense of how a city voted. France’s interior ministry will gradually release official results during the night and until Monday morning. Results in cities that have adopted voting machines will come quicker. Ça va sans dire, the best place to follow the vote is POLITICO’s live blog, which will be back from Sunday. IT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT MAYORS Wannabe mayors are running alongside a host of candidates trying to get a seat in city councils. Seats are distributed proportionally to each list based on their vote share, except for the winning list which, in most towns, automatically gets a majority. Things work differently in France’s three biggest cities, Paris, Marseille and Lyon, where the winning list is only guaranteed a quarter of the seats. City councils also indirectly have a say on national politics as they represent a key chunk of the electoral college, made up of around 162,000 officials, which elects French senators. Half the seats in the senate are contested every three years, with the next vote happening in September. So far, the National Rally and the France Unbowed had little representation in the senate given their historical weakness at the local level. But that’s another thing that could change after Sunday’s vote.

CHÂLONS-EN-CHAMPAGNE, France — In rural Champagne, the National Rally is finding the momentum and enthusiasm it needs to believe that it can win the French presidency in 2027. The first round of local elections on Sunday delivered mixed results for the far-right party, highlighting how a decisive breakthrough still eludes Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and their allies in France’s biggest cities. Despite strong performances in key southern cities like Marseille and Toulon, where the National Rally scored 35 percent and 42 percent of the vote respectively, the runoff this Sunday likely won’t be an emphatic victory given how other movements have teamed up against the National Rally. But the party’s leadership is relishing its growing popularity in Champagne and other areas of France’s heartland where the moderate right formerly prevailed. The National Rally candidate in the famed Champagne capital of Epernay garnered 31 percent of the vote, doubling the party’s score from the previous local elections in 2020 partly thanks to higher turnout. And in the bucolic town of Châlons-en-Champagne, 45 kilometers from the region’s largest city, Reims, the far-right candidate came just a few hundred votes short of the first-place finisher, incumbent Mayor Benoist Apparu, a minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy. The dream is that combining growing rural support with the surging number of far-right voters in the French sunbelt in addition to the National Rally’s northern strongholds will be enough to deliver the poll-topping party their big prize in the 2027 presidential election. In rural Champagne country, the National Rally is finding the momentum and enthusiasm it needs to believe that it can win the French presidency in 2027. | Marion Solletty/POLITICO “It is through these [local] roots that we will rebuild France, town by town,” Le Pen said at a rally Wednesday on the outskirts of Châlons-en-Champagne. “The great victory we are preparing for next year will not be handed to us, it will be conquered.” Speaking to a crowd of about 2,000 people in a mid-sized convention center, Le Pen and other National Rally heavyweights framed the upcoming runoffs as another example of President Emmanuel Macron and his allies trying to “ignore, if not shut down people’s voice.” Many of the cross-party alliances that emerged after the first round of the contest look poised to again block the party from winning control of major cities in the runoffs this Sunday. Lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli elicited cheers in the crowd when he slammed those strategic partnerships as a “ménage à trois between Macronism, Socialism and the fake right” on stage. Ahead of the rally, a small gathering in the city’s historic center on Wednesday gathered around 300 people protesting the National Rally’s presence, but they were stopped by police before they could reach the rally’s venue. UNITE THE RIGHT In Reims, the National Rally landed a symbolic win this week when its candidate, Anne-Sophie Frigout, merged with a center-right candidate, Stéphane Lang from Les Républicains ahead of the runoff. Such alliances, now openly called for by Bardella, used to be anathema for centrist parties who have pledged to keep the National Rally at arm’s length. “I am sure that this alliance is going to reproduce itself everywhere in the weeks and months to come,” Anne-Sophie Frigout told POLITICO at the rally between two selfies with local supporters. | Marion Solletty/POLITICO “I am sure that this alliance is going to reproduce itself everywhere in the weeks and months to come,” Frigout told POLITICO at the rally between two selfies with local supporters. “This is what our voters are asking for here.” The Reims merger is being touted by the National Rally and comes amid increasing support for a union on the right. But whether the merger is indicative of a greater trend within the ranks of Les Républicains remains to be seen. Lang, who failed to qualify for the runoff, was immediately expelled from his party for the rogue move. And given he and Frigout together scored 28.7 percent of the vote in the first round, the alliance is unlikely to lead to victory. Historically, the complex dynamic of ad hoc, last-minute alliances that shape local elections in France’s two-round system has worked against the National Rally, with the far right accusing the rest of the political class of conspiring to keep it out of power. But its leaders now hope they can break that glass ceiling ahead of next year’s presidential race. During his speech at the rally, Bardella’s message to France’s conservative party was simple: “Join us,” he said. “We are facing a wall that is being built against us,” Jacobelli told POLITICO on the sidelines of the rally. “It is not a glass ceiling, it is a reflex of self-preservation” from other parties. The first round of local elections on Sunday delivered mixed results for the poll-topping, far-right party, highlighting how a decisive breakthrough still eludes Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and their allies in France’s biggest cities. | Marion Solletty/POLITICO During Bardella’s speech, a small group overcome by enthusiasm chanted “Jor-dan president, Jor-dan president” — forgetting for the moment that Marine Le Pen, who had a front row seat to the scene, is still supposed to be their presidential candidate pending a decision in her appeal of a five-year election ban. In the crowd, supporters vigorously approved both leaders’ odes to the working class and their chastising of leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “If Mélenchon goes through, we lose France forever,” Jordan Delvallée, a blue-eyed, 22-year-old mechanic who came to the rally with a younger friend. “There is no better party than [the National Rally],” he said, even if “everybody is against them.” “The French get cold feet at second round because they are scared, but one shouldn’t be afraid of change.”

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He posts at @Mij_Europe. France’s municipal elections were never meant to be a dress rehearsal for its next presidential race. And yet, the first round of voting on March 15 was exactly that, offering a revealing and deeply paradoxical snapshot of a politically fractured country. At first glance, the results seemed to confirm the prevailing narrative: That Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) remains the dominant force in French politics, with national opinion polls giving the party a commanding 19-point lead ahead of the 2027 presidential elections. But the reality beneath these headlines is more complicated — and perhaps more fragile. First, the RN’s first-round performance was uneven at best. It did make some advances: It remains competitive in Marseille, leads in Toulon, and most importantly is poised to capture Nice, France’s fifth-largest city, in the second round this coming Sunday. However, analysts have pointed out that the city’s mayoral candidate Eric Ciotti — a former president of the center-right Republicans — only recently joined the RN and made a point of distancing himself from the far-right party throughout his campaign. Furthermore, these gains fell short of both the party’s and pollsters’ expectations. In fact, in most of France’s major urban centers like Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, the RN scored less than 8 percent. The party’s struggles in these big cities suggest that for all its national appeal, it still encounters resistance when voters are asked to entrust it with an actual mandate to govern. French voters may flirt with the far right in theory, but in practice many remain cautious. The most surprising development, meanwhile, was the performance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed movement, which exceeded expectations across the country. The party captured Saint-Denis, is likely to win Roubaix, and gave a strong performance in cities like Toulouse and Lille. It appears this surge was driven, at least in part, by geopolitical developments — specifically the war in Iran. Based on impressions on the ground, heightened anti-war sentiment seems to have mobilized both the Muslim and young hard-left voters who form the party’s base. The implications of this are significant: Many had written Mélenchon off after a series of scandals and a dip in national polling. But these successes suggest he may yet play an important role in shaping the presidential elections — again — making it difficult for a more moderate left candidate to emerge and possibly even reaching the final run-off alongside the far right. Meanwhile, France’s traditional parties — the center-left Socialists and center-right Republicans — continue to display an unexpected resilience at the local level, despite being nationally sidelined since 2017. Together they dominated a majority of towns, including many of the country’s largest cities, remaining deeply embedded in municipal politics. By contrast, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist movement remains conspicuously weak, having failed to establish a meaningful municipal base after nearly a decade in power. It’s an absence that helps explain the lack of a clear anti-incumbent wave, as voters had limited opportunities to express dissatisfaction with the government at the local ballot box given the relatively few centrist mayors they could unseat. Finally, amid this fragmented field, the one figure that stands out is former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Philippe’s strong showing in Le Havre — where he secured 43 percent of the vote in the first round — comfortably positions him for reelection. And out of the large pack of candidates trailing behind the far right in the presidential polls, he now looks to be the strongest (though marginally) and most experienced contender. Philippe had previously said he would abandon his national ambitions if he lost the mayoral race, but a good win on Sunday could easily relaunch his flagging national campaign. The second round of municipal elections will, of course, be crucial. A strong showing by the RN — particularly if the party is able to capture Marseille and Toulon — could restore its momentum and reinforce its performance at the national level. But in such an uncertain environment, next year’s race is far from decided. And what the first round of municipal results really reveal isn’t so much a country marching in one direction as one pulled in several at once, searching — perhaps uneasily — for a new political equilibrium.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday castigated France’s mainstream political parties for working with “dangerous,” more radical ones after the first round of local elections. The comments, shared by government spokesperson Maud Bregeon after a Cabinet meeting, are Macron’s first since voters went to the polls Sunday in all of France’s approximately 35,000 municipalities. “Arrangements between parties should not lead to forgetting certain principles,” Macron said, according to Bregeon. While the far-right National Rally has yet to convince other more moderate right-wing parties to join forces, the Socialist Party teamed up with the more radical France Unbowed in several cities where the hard-left party performed surprisingly well — including Toulouse, home to European aerospace giant Airbus, and Clermont-Ferrand, where tire-maker Michelin is located. Those unions on the left came after the Socialists had vowed heading into the contest not to work with France Unbowed on the national level. But the party’s relatively weak performance in cities saw local politicians effectively ignore that decision locally to either keep control of certain municipalities or take them from the right, even if it means empowering France Unbowed ahead of next year’s presidential race. Les Républicains, the historic party of French conservatism, has not endorsed any of the several far-right candidates who made the runoff in southern cities such as Marseille or Toulon, but has not explicitly called on its voters to vote strategically against the far right, as it customarily did in the past. In Nice, where current mayor Christian Estrosi could lose to National Rally ally Eric Ciotti, Les Républicains President Bruno Retailleau said it was up to voters to pick their preferred candidate and refused to weigh in on the race — even though his party officially supports Estrosi. Nice, the unofficial capital of the French Riviera and the fifth most populous French city, would be the biggest win ever for the far right.

PARIS — Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon is emerging from this month’s municipal elections as France’s chief political disrupter, building momentum he hopes will turn him into the leading contender against the far right in next year’s presidential race. The nightmare scenario for France’s beleaguered center left, however, is that Mélenchon would make for a highly divisive presidential candidate, and polling suggests he could ultimately gift a win to the far-right National Rally in 2027. The 74-year-old former teacher took a highly abrasive, confrontational approach to the local elections — stoking controversy with his unapologetic response to the killing of a far-right activist, and later with comments that were condemned as antisemitic. But this pugnacious strategy — slammed by his critics as a “brutalization” of politics — seems to have paid off, with his France Unbowed party winning big in key target areas like working-class and immigrant communities in Sunday’s first round. Mélenchon has hailed his results as a “magnificent breakthrough.” France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris outright, and he looks well-placed to win mayoral contests in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in France’s fourth-largest city, Toulouse. DIVISIVE LEADER Mélenchon’s performance now looks set to have major consequences across France’s political landscape. He is anathema to France’s centrists, and his political rise only heightens the perception that the country’s leftist camp will be rudderless and riven by internal feuds, just as the country faces its most momentous election in years, with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from the far-right National Rally as the current favorites for the presidency. For now, it also looks highly improbable that such an inflammatory figure as Mélenchon can stop the far right if he qualifies for the second round of the presidential vote next year. While he describes French politics as an “us-against-them” battle on the extremes, and sees France Unbowed as the only party that can lead a “single front” against the far right, polling suggests the French electorate is extremely wary of him. If Mélenchon were to make it to a runoff in 2027, a poll in November suggested he would be smashed by Bardella. According to the survey by Odoxa, 74 percent would pick the National Rally leader for the Elysée. “It’s not at all certain that France Unbowed can widen its electorate to the [centrist] Macron-backing voters,” said Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard. French far-right Rassemblement National party’s President Jordan Bardella speaks after the first round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Beaucaire, south-eastern France on March 15, 2026. | Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images “Mélenchon is a great political machine that mobilizes the left-wing electorate … but he is also a machine that scares away more moderate voters,” he said. DISARRAY ON THE LEFT Not everyone agrees that France Unbowed’s results on Sunday were as emphatic as Mélenchon is making them out to be. The center-left Socialist Party and its allies are still on track to hold onto many more cities and towns, including Marseille and Montpellier. And the hard left’s combative messaging has not been successful everywhere. “There are towns where their results are quite disappointing,” said pollster Gallard, pointing to suburbs in Paris and Lyon. But even if the hard left’s victories turn out to be less impressive on closer inspection, they are still sending shockwaves through the rest of the left. The Socialist Party, which has been hoping for a comeback after a decade of center-right politics under Macron, is the first and most obvious of Mélenchon’s victims. The moderate left very publicly condemned France Unbowed when Mélenchon refused to distance himself from the ultra-left group that was involved in the death of far-right activist Quentin Deranque. Shock then turned to horror last month when Mélenchon was accused of antisemitism after mocking the pronunciation of Jewish names and playing up the Jewishness of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Marine Le Pen (L) and Jordan Bardella arrive at the Hotel Matignon to attend a meeting of party leaders on the conflict in Iran, hosted by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, in Paris on March 11, 2026. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images “He’s the Jean-Marie Le Pen of our times,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a Jewish politician from the center left who was targeted by Mélenchon. Glucksmann was referring to Marine Le Pen’s father, who founded the National Front and downplayed the Holocaust. In the wake of Sunday’s results, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure tried to hold the line against France Unbowed, pledging there would be no “national alliance.” But within hours the Socialists were striking deals at the local level, including in France’s third-largest city, Lyon.  “We’ll get attacked all week,” warned Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a Socialist former lawmaker, who slammed the “lack of clarity” over the party’s position. “What we’ll win now, we’ll lose in the presidential election because we won’t be credible,” he said. In another sign of division, the Socialists and the Greens have also been at each other’s throats over whether to team up with France Unbowed. GAMING THE TWO-ROUND ELECTION For Mélenchon, such divisions are good news. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party, during a press conference in Lyon. France on March 10, 2026. | Albin Bonnard/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images After blowing up France’s traditional parties, President Emmanuel Macron has left a fragmented political landscape ahead of the 2027 presidential election, along with a weakened centrist coalition. With the French president unable to run for a third consecutive term, there’s a surplus of presidential hopefuls on the starting line. This could lower the threshold of votes needed to qualify for the runoff vote against the far right. Candidates such as Mélenchon, who have a dedicated and loyal voter base, may be able to pull past more consensual candidates who could cancel each other out. “That’s his strategy,” said a Socialist Party adviser who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss party politics. “We are capable of taking a dive in elections, but France Unbowed never takes a dive, they never go under 10 percent” in national elections, the adviser said. “But there isn’t a scenario in which he wins in a runoff vote against Bardella.” The difficulty for the moderate left is compounded by the fact that Mélenchon is one of the most charismatic politicians on the left. He has even drawn the reluctant admiration of Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, who called him “the most cultured” politician around. But what’s true of the left is also to some extent true of the conservatives and the center right, which are enmeshed in internal squabbling to see who can assume Macron’s mantle. “What are the political offers on the table and who is there to embody them?” asked a close ally of the French president. “I can see what the extremes are offering, but in between, it’s really not clear,” he said. That’s a gap Mélenchon is trying to exploit.

LONDON — Donald Trump loves to make deals, and one of his closest confidants in Europe believes a pact might be within reach that could help solve both the Gulf oil crisis and the war in Ukraine in one go.  Finland’s President Alexander Stubb says he can see real potential in offering Trump what he wants: European military support to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping route that Iran has effectively blockaded in response to American and Israeli bombing.  Europe’s condition for providing such assistance? That the U.S. president delivers all the help Ukraine needs to reach an acceptable peace deal with Russia.  The idea of bargaining with Trump was put to Stubb during a question-and-answer session at London’s Chatham House think tank on Tuesday. The Finnish leader seemed surprised — and impressed. “I think it’s a really good idea,” he said, adding after a pause: “No, I think it’s actually a really good idea.” Stubb said he’d consider it further and discuss options with his team.  Finland itself doesn’t have any assets to contribute to securing the Strait of Hormuz, and it’s still far from clear what role European forces could play there. But the question of how to bolster Ukraine — and get Trump on board — is an urgent one for Europe.  Officials — including Stubb — fear the longer Trump’s war against Iran continues, the more it could constrain Ukraine’s fight against invading Russian forces. Soaring global energy prices — and Washington’s decision to loosen sanctions on Russia’s oil industry — will significantly boost Vladimir Putin’s income from Russian fossil fuel sales. At the same time, American forces are using hundreds of interceptor missiles to shoot down Iranian rockets and drones, leaving fewer available for Ukraine. Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities rely on air defenses for protection against an ongoing barrage of ballistic missiles from Russia.  And Trump has again recently pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree a deal with Putin, without clarifying what — if any — security guarantees America would provide to keep the peace. Stubb told his audience he feared that peace talks in Ukraine are fast approaching a moment of truth, which could force Kyiv to accept a a bad settlement that involves ceding territory to Putin. The negotiations could even collapse, leaving Europe on the hook — without American help — obliging European powers to step in to help Ukraine with more intelligence, weapons and other support, he said.  Stubb said he takes a realistic view of how much he is able to influence Trump, after the two bonded over a seven-hour golf and lunch meeting last year. Finland has just bought 64 F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. and hosts thousands of American troops training in Arctic conditions. “I have no illusions about who can convince President Trump on anything,” Stubb said. “If I get one idea out of 10 in on Ukraine, I think it’s good.” The implications of the war in Iran are “negative” for Ukraine, mainly because the price of oil favors Russia’s war machinery, Stubb said. “The Russian economy was actually doing extremely badly a couple of weeks back, now it’s bouncing back.” It’s also taking air defense systems away from where they are needed in Ukraine.  Finally, it has shifted the focus from the peace talks on Ukraine. “I hope the peace negotiations on Ukraine don’t collapse like the negotiations between Iran and the U.S. did,” Stubb said. “But time will tell.”