This hurts, Macron; "The ultimate demise..."

For the 46-year-old leader of France, yesterday's first round of parliamentary elections was a huge humiliation. He called snap elections after a disastrous defeat by the far-right in June's European elections and with one goal in mind: to stop the drift into extremism.

He achieved the opposite, writes Politico. Europe's second-biggest economy and Europe's only nuclear-armed power is now closer than ever to the far-right coming to power, as the National Rally party won the first round of voting.

An absolute majority requires 289 seats in the parliament

If voters give the National Assembly a parliamentary majority on July 7, which forecasts suggest is possible, France will find itself in uncharted waters. The country will be led by those who sympathized with Vladimir Putin, promised a war on migration and considered leaving NATO.

Although the National Gathering has softened some of its harsher views, it remains deeply skeptical of mainstream Western political views. A far-right victory in this election would also greatly boost its prospects in the 2027 presidential election.

"We can say with lucidity that the detoxification of the National Assembly is in its final phase. They won the European elections three times in a row, and Marine Le Pen twice made it to the second round of the presidential elections. If they win the second most important elections (parliamentary) in France, they will become "mainstream", Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst from the "Sciences Po" institute, is convinced.

According to the analysis of the public opinion polling institute Ipsos, the National Assembly is close to an absolute majority. The party received 33.2 percent of the vote in the first round, which means it could win between 230-280 seats in parliament.

Since the threshold for an absolute majority in parliament is 289 seats, the far right could even be in a position to form a government in seven days with the chief of the main far-right party Jordan Bardella as prime minister. Now the question is whether anything or anyone can stop it.

How close Le Pen will get to an absolute majority depends on how other parties, including Macron, react to her victory yesterday. Will other parties put their differences aside and unite and create a "sanitary cordon" in order to defeat the extreme right, asks Politico, as reported by Index.hr.