Éric Ciotti caused outrage among some in his party, Les Républicains, after he announced it would ally itself with the far-right Rassemblement National which is hoping to win an absolute majority in snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday.
Voting across the EU's 27 member states saw the centre-right parties strengthen their majority in the European Parliament, with victories in Germany, Greece, Poland and Spain, and significant advances in Hungary, against long-dominant Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
French economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking on French radio following Emmanuel Macron's decision to call snap legislative elections, warned that they 'will be the most consequential parliamentary election for France and for the French in the history of the Fifth Republic'.
In a televised announcement one hour after the last polling booths closed in elections in France for the European Parliament, in which early estimations give the far-right Rassemblement National party a large victory, President Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament for snap national parliamentary elections, to be held over two rounds on June 30th and July 7th.
French exit poll estimates released after voting in the European Parliament elections ended at 8pm gave the far-right Rassemblement National party a strong lead at around 32.4% of votes cast, with Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party second on 15.2%, the Socialist Party third on 14%, while the radical-left, the Greens and the conservatives were all given less than 10%.
US President Joe Biden began a state visit to France on Saturday, greeted by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron amid great pomp in Paris after two days spent in Normandy commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in a television interview ahead of a meeting in Paris with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday evening, has announced that France will give Ukraine an unspecified number of Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets this year and train the pilots.
On the morning of D-Day, French army commandos were parachuted into Brittany to join with local Resistance fighters and block German reinforcements from reaching the landing beaches in Normandy, in a tragic move that was finally officially commemorated this week for the first time since 1947.
Presidents Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, and Volodymyr Zelensky, prime ministers Rishi Sunak and Justin Trudeau, and the UK's King Charles joined with surviving veterans at offical ceremonies held on Thursday at cemeteries close to the Normandy beaches where the largest-ever amphibious invasion in history took place on June 6th 1944.
Three weeks after two prison guards escorting inmate Mohamed Amra were gunned down at a motorway toll station, neither he nor the gang that freed him have been traced.
