French centrist and leftwing parties raced against time on Monday to keep the Rassemblement National from power, despite the far-right party’s victory in the first round of parliamentary elections.

The RN’s opponents on the centre and the left have until Tuesday to decide whether to pull candidates out of hundreds of election run-offs, after agreeing to limited electoral co-operation against Marine Le Pen’s party.

France’s blue-chip Cac 40 stock index rose 1.6 per cent, as investors bet that the second round next weekend would deny the far right or far left a majority in the National Assembly. The euro gained 0.3 per to $1.075.

The RN came top in Sunday’s first-round election with 33.2 per cent of the vote, ahead of the leftwing New Popular Front on 28 per cent and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance on 22.4 per cent.

The result was a political earthquake and projections suggest the RN will still win the most seats in the run-off. But its vote share combined with allies was lower than some opinion polls had predicted last week.

“The result is probably better than feared, but not as good as the status three weeks ago pre-elections,” said Mohit Kumar, an analyst at Jefferies.

The gap between benchmark French and German 10-year borrowing costs, seen as a barometer for the risk of holding France’s debt, narrowed on Monday to 0.75 percentage points, after last week hitting the highest level since the Eurozone debt crisis in 2012.

Ensemble and NFP candidates who finished third in their district are now under intense pressure to withdraw and avoid dividing the anti-RN vote in the election’s second round on July 7.

The first round produced more than 300 three-way run-offs, according to Financial Times calculations, an unprecedented number, although the final figure will depend on how many candidates drop out.

Macron’s prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who faces being ousted from his post, said in an address: “The lesson tonight is that the extreme right is on the verge of taking power. Our objective is clear: stopping the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round and governing the country with its disastrous project.”

According to FT calculations, with nearly all districts counted the RN finished first in 296 constituencies out of 577, while the NFP led in 150 and Ensemble in 60. There will be about 65 constituencies with the RN and NFP in two-way run-offs. A party needs 289 seats for a majority.

By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place.

However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.

Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI. 

Former prime minister Édouard Philippe said his Horizons party would instruct candidates to withdraw only in contests with no LFI representative. “I consider that no vote should be given to candidates of the RN or LFI, with whom we differ, not only on programmes but on fundamental values,” Philippe said.

Armin Steinbach, professor of law and tax at HEC Paris business school said that a “relative majority for the RN, not an absolute one, is the most likely outcome next week”.

“If France is threatened by market turmoil, the RN — unlike the far left — will be able to adapt very quickly because it is less ideological in economic policy than in identity policy,” he said.

French stock and bond markets tumbled after Macron called snap elections three weeks ago as investors fretted about a possible far right victory or political gridlock with populist forces dominating parliament after the July 7 run-off vote.

In previous second-round elections, French voters have often acted to create a so-called front républicain — backing candidates they would otherwise reject to lock out the RN. But it remains to be seen whether such voting customs still work with the far right in the ascendancy.

Socialist party chief Olivier Faure criticised Macron and recalled that leftist voters had twice helped him beat the RN to the presidency. “It remains confused, too confused from a president who has benefited from your votes in 2017 and 2022,” Faure told an NFP rally.

In a sign that Macron’s camp was trying to woo new allies, Attal announced that he would suspend a reform of the unemployment system due to take effect on Monday. It had been rejected by the left because it cut the time during which claimants could get benefits.

Le Pen said on Sunday that the first-round results had “practically erased” Macron’s centrist bloc. “The French have expressed their desire to turn the page on seven years of a government that treated them with disdain,” she told supporters in her constituency in Hénin-Beaumont, northern France.

If the RN wins a majority, Macron would be forced into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement, with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella as prime minister. 

There have been three instances of such a “cohabitation” in France since 1958 but never involving parties and leaders with such contrasting views.

Mathieu Gallard, a researcher from polling group Ipsos, said whether the RN won an outright majority would depend mainly on the strength of the front républicain and how many leftwing and centrist voters made it a priority to counter Le Pen’s party.

Steeve Briois, a senior RN official, dismissed the idea that tactical manoeuvres or voting advice would stop them from winning.

“[That] the other parties should call for an anti-RN front — it actually just annoys people and motivates them to vote for us,” he told the FT in Hénin-Beaumont. “The glass ceiling, the idea of a front républicain — that does not work any more.”

Louisiana is now the first state to allow surgical castration to be used as a punishment for sex crimes under a new law signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. This law, which will go into effect Aug. 1, allows judges to order people found guilty of certain sex crimes against minors to undergo surgical castration.

The use of surgical castration as punishment, which is a permanent procedure that involves the surgical removal of the testicles or ovaries ostensibly to stop the production of sex hormones, is rare elsewhere around the world. The Czech Republic, Madagascar and a state in Nigeria have such laws on the books that have been strongly criticized by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.

Several U.S. states, including Louisiana, as well as other countries have laws allowing for the use of chemical castration — a procedure that uses pharmaceutical drugs to quell the offenders’ sex drive — for certain sex crimes.

The passage of this bill in Louisiana has grabbed headlines and caused ripples of consternation among criminal defense lawyers, advocates and medical experts, raising serious concerns around the ethics and constitutionality of the law and questions over whether this punishment would actually make a difference in reducing sex crimes.

“It’s very confusing, in addition to being absolutely unprecedented, and draconian and overkill,” said Gwyneth O’Neill, a New Orleans-based criminal defense attorney and a member of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

One of the drafters of the bill, Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd, told NPR the law will be a strong deterrent for would-be child sex abusers and would protect children.

So, what does the law say?

The law, as written, targets offenders found guilty of aggravated sex crimes, including rape, incest or molestation against a child under 13. The punishment would be brought in certain cases and at a judge’s discretion and the surgery would be completed by a physician. It will also require a court-appointed medical expert to determine whether the offender is the right candidate for the surgery.

An offender could refuse to get the surgery, but would then be sentenced to three to five years of an additional prison sentence without the possibility of getting out early.

The law doesn’t allow anyone under 17 found guilty of certain aggravated sex crimes to receive the punishment.

Boyd says she was inspired to propose this bill after seeing a disturbing article from a local newspaper about a 51-year-old man who was arrested for the alleged rape of a 12 year old. The story revealed that the man was a registered sex offender. In 2007 he had been arrested for allegedly raping a 5 year old.

Louisiana Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd works at her desk at her office on May 3, 2024, in New Orleans. Boyd introduced the bill, now law, that would allow for surgical castration to be used against individuals convicted of certain sex crimes.

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Boyd said that she believes the criticism she’s received from opponents of the law is from people who haven’t closely read the law and think it forces a prisoner to undergo this procedure.

“Some of the critics say, you know, that’s cruel and unusual punishment. Well, I disagree. I think the cruel and usual punishment was the rape of that 5 year old,” Boyd said.

The reasons why people commit sex offenses are so much more complicated than something that can be fixed with castration, said Maaike Helmus, an associate professor of School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Helmus’ research focuses on offender risk assessment and on men who have committed sexual offenses or intimate partner violence.

“In our minds, it’s easy to link castration to the problem that they’re exhibiting and think that’ll fix it, but it’s taking a lot of leaps and logic that are not warranted, and not considering other alternatives,” like the use of medication, she said.

This law is part of the state’s ‘tough on crime’ efforts

In February, the state legislature held a special session on crime and passed several bills that Landry and lawmakers said would bring justice to crime victims and their families, according to Baton Rouge Public Radio.

The member station reported that the series of tough-on-crime bills passed the session “will likely reshape the landscape of criminal punishment in Louisiana for years to come.”

The bills expanded death penalty methods, effectively eliminated parole for anyone convicted after Aug. 1, lowered the amount of “good time credit” with few exceptions and established harsher penalties for some crimes.

Gov. Jeff Landry shakes hands with representatives while entering the House chamber during the first day of a special session on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, in Baton Rouge, La.

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There are concerns over discriminatory application of the law

If it is challenged, O’Neill, the New Orleans-based criminal defense attorney, said it’s highly likely the law would be deemed unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

“Surgical castration is generally considered, or was considered, to be sort of like the paradigmatic example of cruel and unusual punishment, because it’s a form of physical mutilation. It’s barbaric,” she said.

Once it’s enacted later this summer, O’Neill fears the law could be applied in a discriminatory way — the same way the death penalty and other criminal justice policies tend to be, she said.

There is research that indicates the U.S. criminal justice system is applied unfairly to people of color, especially Black Americans. Research shows the number of imprisoned Black Americans has decreased 39% since its peak in 2002, according to The Sentencing Project, but remains higher for Black Americans generally. And in Louisiana, along with Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma, the imprisonment rates are nearly 50% above the national average, according to the organization.

O’Neill says the law also uses vague and potentially confusing terms.

The law’s language mandates that a “court appointed medical expert” can decide if a person found guilty of a sex offense should undergo surgical castration. “We don’t know who that is, who’s going to qualify to be a medical expert,” O’Neill said. “There’s no guidance about that.”

And that introduces risks for defendants, she said.

“I think anytime you have this vague terminology, you’re not going to get the most qualified people to make such a determination,” O’Neill said. The law also doesn’t establish the criteria to evaluate whether an offender is an appropriate candidate for this punishment, she said.

“Practically speaking, I think it puts defense attorneys in a very difficult position,” she said.

Vehicles enter at the main security gate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the largest high-security prison in the U.S. in Angola, La., in August 2008.

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Could this law impact repeat offenses?

Part of the motivation behind this law was to cut down on the possibility of someone reoffending. But the research on sexual offense recidivism rates is tough to parse. The research on surgical castration and its effect has only been done on people who have voluntarily undergone the procedure out of concern they will harm again, Helmus said.

That impacts the analysis because these are individuals who are already working to not reoffend, she said.

“If you combine different studies, over multiple countries and jurisdictions and different types of settings, five-year sexual recidivism rates are generally expected to be in the range of five to 10%. And lifetime rates are maybe around 15 to 20%,” Helmus said.

But that’s only for cases the public knows about.

“We know that not all sex offenses get reported to police for a variety of reasons. And so we know that sexual recidivism rates are to some degree an underestimate, because not everything comes to the attention of police. However, it’s hard to know how much that’s actually going to affect reoffending rates,” she said.

Ultimately there’s very limited research on the effectiveness of any type of castration with people who’ve committed sex offenses, Helmus said.

“The whole point of castration is that it is supposed to reduce the sex drive. If you’re pursuing castration to reduce sexual offense rates, you’re making an assumption that they’re committing a sex offense because of a high sex drive or high testosterone rates in the first place,” but this is not always the motivation for committing these offenses, Helmus said.

Research indicates that there’s no evidence that people who commit sex offenses have higher testosterone in the first place.

“If that’s not the reason why they’re committing sex offenses, then reducing their testosterone is going to do nothing to reduce that risk,” she said.

Surgical castration also doesn’t mean someone cannot be sexually aroused or, in the case of men, get an erection or ejaculate, Helmus said. Not to mention there is still psychological arousal and urges that are not addressed with this procedure.

“Even if castrated, they can later take medications to reduce or reverse the effects of castration and still be able to increase their sex drive,” she said. “So castration isn’t a foolproof way of getting rid of their sex drive. What we know, especially for people who commit sex offenses against children, they don’t need an erection to be able to commit many of the types of sex offenses that they commit.”

Boyd still believes that this law could serve as a strong deterrent.

“These predators have to be stopped,” she said. “Even if just one rapist changes his mind about raping a child, I will take that.”

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Marine Le Pen’s far-right party has battered President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in the first round of snap French parliamentary elections, moving the country closer to a potential nationalist government that would jolt the European project.

After unusually high turnout, the Rassemblement National (RN) party and its allies won 33.2 per cent of the vote, while the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance came second with 28 per cent, according to provisional results published by the interior ministry. Macron’s Ensemble alliance and allies secured 22.4 per cent of the vote.

The first-round results suggest the RN and its allies are on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly and potentially even an outright majority in the final round of voting on July 7.

If the RN secures 289 seats in the 577-strong lower house, it will force Macron into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement known as a “cohabitation” in which two opposing parties must govern together.

However, the vote has led to an unprecedented number of three-way run-offs, which make seat projections difficult. Ipsos estimated there would be 285 to 315 potential three-way contests in the second round, assuming that no candidates withdraw.

An intense period of bargaining will now begin between leftwing and centrist parties over whether to drop out in some seats in an attempt to block the RN from winning. Parties must finalise their candidate lists in 48 hours.

Speaking from Hénin-Beaumont, her constituency in northern France where she easily won re-election, Le Pen hailed poll results that “practically erased” Macron’s centrist bloc.

“The French have expressed their desire to turn the page on seven years of a government that treated them with disdain,” she said before cheering supporters waving French flags.

Macron said: “Faced with the Rassemblement National, the time has come for a large, clear alliance between democratic and republican forces for the second round.”

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, appointed by Macron, said his campaign’s priority was to “stop the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round and governing the country with its disastrous project”.

Ensemble said its candidates would drop out in areas where they had come in third place in favour of contenders “in a position to beat the RN and with whom we share the essential: the values of the republic”.

The Conservative Les Républicains party (LR) refused to advise voters to reject the far-right in the second round.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) that is part of the NFP, called for the withdrawal of all leftwing candidates where they are in third place in order to beat the RN.

The euro rose 0.2 per cent against the US dollar in early Asian trading. At $1.0744, it was the euro’s highest level against the dollar since last Tuesday. 

The snap French vote has badly backfired for Macron, who called it last month after his centrist alliance lost to the RN in European parliamentary elections — in a move that stunned the public and angered many in his own camp.

His alliance could end up losing more than half of its roughly 250 seats in the lower house, as it is squeezed between an ascendant far right and a newly united left.

By contrast, the far right, which has not been in power since the Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi Germany, could move from the fringes of politics to the heart of government.

It would be the culmination of Le Pen’s decade-long efforts to “detoxify” the party, including by ousting her father, who founded it with a former soldier from the French unit of the Nazi’s Waffen-SS.

Many French voters have come to reject Macron, who they see as elitist and out of touch, and prefer RN for its emphasis on cost of living issues and wages, on top of its traditional anti-immigration stance.

There have been three cohabitations in France’s postwar history, but none involving parties with such diametrically opposite views.  

If the RN wins an outright majority and forms a government, Le Pen has already said her 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella would serve as prime minister.

They would run domestic affairs and set the budget, while Macron would remain chief of the armed forces and set foreign policy.

Le Pen and Bardella have both signalled in recent days that they would challenge Macron’s authority including on defence and foreign policy — a prospect that is likely to alarm allies and markets alike.

The NFP also performed strongly in the first round as voters backed its heavy tax-and-spend economic agenda that also focuses on social justice and investing more to improve public services.

The NFP’s dominant party is the LFI. It also includes the centre-left Socialists, the Greens and the Communists, who have major policy differences with LFI and have so far rejected Mélenchon as their candidate for prime minister.

Bruno Cautrès, political scientist at Sciences Po university in Paris, said it was too early to make accurate seat projections.

“There are two unknowns for the second round — how many candidates will drop out and how leftwing and centrist voters will behave if they know that the RN is on the verge of power,” he said.

The best-case scenario for Macron at this point would be a hung parliament with none of the three blocs able to claim a majority.

Gridlock would ensue, but he could make a last-ditch effort to form a technocratic government. Macron cannot dissolve parliament again until a year from now.