French President Emmanuel Macron attacked moves towards new political alliances among opposition parties on Wednesday as he called on mainstream parties to join forces to defeat extremists on both the left and the right.
"At both extremes, there are unnatural alliances that are in agreement effectively on nothing," Macron said in Paris. These alliances were being cobbled together without having governing majorities, he said.
Reacting to the defeat of liberal groups and the strong showing of right-wing nationalists in the European elections on Sunday, Macron has dissolved the National Assembly and called elections to be held in two stages on June 30 and July 7.
In response politicians on the left of French politics, including communists, greens and socialists announced that they would join forces.
Éric Ciotti, the head of the conservative The Republicans, said that he would seek to cooperate with the right-wing nationalists of the National Rally, whose parliamentary leader is Marine Le Pen.
Ciotti's announcement provoked outrage within his own party along with calls for his resignation.
Macron said that party members following Ciotti's lead were turning their backs on France's conservative heritage, including figures like Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
"We have been observing the masks falling since Sunday evening," he said. The struggle regarding values was beginning. "I would say that that this is a trial of truth between those who decide they want to own affairs to flourish and those that want France to flourish," Macron said.
Macron said he was prepared to cooperate with all those not in extreme alliances on the left or the right. "This is a re-founding of political life, for which I call with great humility and determination," he said.
Macron said he was convinced that social democrats, radicals, environmentalists, Christian democrats, Gaullists and many French compatriots and politicians in the wider sense, who were not stuck in extremism and who backed certain clear approaches, could work together to create a new governing project.
"I firmly believe that only the political forces that form the presidential majority today have the ability to put forward a coherent, realistic and future-oriented government project," Macron said. His term of office runs to 2027.
