World
French National Assembly election: What’s at stake and what to expect?
French voters will cast their ballots on Sunday in the first of two rounds to elect 577 members of the National Assembly, as country looks set to enter a new political era.
The elections come after French President Emmanuel Macron called for a snap vote triggered by a crushing defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (NR) party at the European Parliament elections on June 9.
Polls suggest the coming elections will confirm the trend. NR leads strongly with 36 percent of the vote, followed by left-wing bloc Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) at 28.5 percent, trailed by Macron’s centrist alliance – Ensemble – with 21 percent.
If the results echo the polls, Macron might have to cohabitate with an antagonistic prime minister, regardless of who is elected.
How do the French elections work?
Voting opens at 06:00 GMT and is expected to end at 16:00 GMT in most of the country, but polling stations in Paris and other major cities will stay open until 18:00 GMT.
To win a majority in the National Assembly, a party or alliance needs 289 seats — just over the halfway mark in the House. Macron’s outgoing coalition fell short of that number, limiting its ability to push through its legislative agenda.
For the verdict on any of the 577 seats to be called on Sunday, July 30, two conditions need to be met. First, the voter turnout needs to be at least 25 percent. Second, a candidate needs to win an absolute majority of votes cast.
In a multiparty system like France’s, that typically means that many, if not most, contests go to a second round of voting – scheduled this time for July 7.
Only those candidates who secure at least 12.5 percent of the vote in the first round can stand in the second round, effectively narrowing the field of contestants.
Why is this election so different?
Traditionally, National Assembly elections are held straight after the presidential vote, and so reflect the same popular mood. The result is a prime minister from the same political party as the president, who then can implement policies with a strong mandate.
But those power dynamics have now shifted and for the first time in 22 years, France will have a state of cohabitation: a deeply unpopular president ruling alongside a government elected in as a vote of dissatisfaction against Macron himself.
“It will mark the beginning of a new way of governing and the end of the presidential agenda,” said Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for European Perspective and Security Studies, a think tank on diplomacy and political analysis. “Macronism has already almost collapsed and it will exit the election totally wiped out,” he said.
How did we get here?
Macron first came to power in 2017 riding a wave of support, as he pledged to create a centrist bloc, lacing the moderate left and right together. But it didn’t take long before his language started sounding too aloof to the ears of people in the suburbs – he got the nickname Jupiter. His economic reforms were too right wing to liberals who had previously backed him; and his way of governing was seen as too despotic by many right and left voters.
Now, the election could mark an end to Jupiter’s solo show, as France looks set to enter a new political era.
“He runs the country like a CEO of a company,” said Samantha de Bendern, associate fellow at Chatham House. “But a country is not a company and he failed to build alliances with partners – Macron is a loner,” de Bendern said.
One of the starkest signals of his isolation was the Yellow Vest movement – a period of violent protests in 2018. What started as workers on lower-middle incomes infuriated by planned increases in diesel taxes snowballed into a wider movement against the president’s perceived bias in favour of the elite. His second mandate was marked by a highly contested bill in 2023 to raise the country’s retirement by two years which turned into another huge domestic challenge as he faced widespread opposition.
And while he won a second mandate in 2022 – in good measure by scaring, rather than attracting, voters over the prospect of the far right taking over the presidency – the tactic seems to have tired many. “There is a feeling of anger – people are fed up with showing this scare for Le Pen while being forced to vote for Macron to keep out the far right,” de Bendern said.
What is Le Pen’s ‘dediabolisation’?
Meanwhile, Le Pen has meticulously crafted a so-called dediabolisation – de-demonisation – strategy over the past two decades, aimed at broadening the party’s base while tempering its radical discourse to distance itself from many references that had made the NR too toxic to several voters.
The party has long been associated with notorious racists, and xenophobic and anti-Semitic slurs. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, once convicted of hate speech for saying that Nazi gas chambers were “a detail of history”, was expelled from the party in 2015. Le Pen convinced the moderate right instead that she was not a threat to democracy and conquered areas traditionally close to the far left, especially in the Communist Party, promising social welfare policies and tight restrictions on migrants.
“Many [by voting NR] are expressing their opposition to a system that they feel is depriving them of what they deserve in favour of people, mostly foreigners, who are getting benefits that are not due,” said Baptiste Roger-Lacan, historian and political analyst with a focus on far-right parties in Europe.
Today, the party’s candidate to be the country’s prime minister is Jordan Bardella, an impeccably dressed 28-year-old man who looks like a mix between a Wolf of Wall Street and Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent. Yet he comes from the suburbs and speaks to his tens of thousands of followers not just on the street but also on TikTok. He has no experience in governance.
On the other side, far to centre-left parties have united under the New Popular Front. Its most vocal cause has been its support for the Palestinian cause amid the war in Gaza, a position that has earned the grouping popularity among young voters and the Muslim community.
By contrast, the NR has firmly supported Israel condemning “pogroms on Israeli soil” and attacking the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, for failing to call the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel “terrorism” – something that has caused friction within the bloc itself.
What would a far-right win mean?
The most serious repercussion of a win for the NR is going to be on the domestic front. While the party now says anti-Semitism is a problem of the left-wing party, it has shifted its focus against migrants and Muslims. France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim community, with families settled there for several generations.
While Bardella did not specify what “specific legislation” he would push for to fight “Islamist ideologies”, he said in the past the party would work to ban the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in public spaces and to make it easier to close mosques.
The RN has also made its top priority the adoption of stringent border controls, the scrapping of birthright citizenship – a practice that for centuries has been granting citizenship to those born in France to foreign parents – and the introduction via constitutional referendum of the “national preference”, a system by which someone would be excluded benefits from social security rights unless with a French passport.
“Clearly the NR is still xenophobic so any foreigner has something to lose, any foreigner who has not a European heritage would have to lose something if the NR were to be elected,” Roger-Lacan said.
And what about foreign policy?
With his eyes on power, Bardella has been softening or reversing some of the party’s traditional positions. He made a U-turn on Ukraine saying he was committed to keep providing military support to Kyiv, while pushing back against critics’ allegations of some party members’ links to the Kremlin.
Still, considering Macron’s unwavering stance on Ukraine and France’s role as a pillar of the European Union, a Bardella-led government not committed as much to the European project, would mark a shift.
During a news conference on Monday, Bardella said he opposes sending French troops and weaponry capable of striking targets on Russian soil.
“He is in a phase where is trying to reassure the non-NR electorate, and possibly future EU partners, but clearly the party gaining power would add a lot of tension between France and the rest of the EU,” said Roger-Lacan, who is also former deputy editor-in-chief at the think tank Le Grand Continent.
Unlike Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had transitioned towards more Atlantic, pro-NATO, pro-EU positions years before her election victory in 2022, Roger-Lacan explains, the NR’s conversion “sounds extremely contextual”.
Still, should the far right win the elections, observers note, it could end up abstaining from creating too much tremor, should it win the elections, as the group is playing the long game. It’s ultimate goal: capturing the presidency in 2027.
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By David E. Sanger, Coleman Lowndes, Nikolay Nikolov, Edward Vega and June Kim
January 14, 2026
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JOHANNESBURG: A staggering and growing wave of persecution against Christians across sub-Saharan Africa has been laid bare in the latest Open Doors’ World Watch List for 2025. The report says three out of four Christians murdered worldwide are killed in Nigeria.
Fourteen of the top 50 countries worldwide where verified deaths could be reasonably linked to victims’ Christian faith are in sub-Saharan Africa. Open Doors is a global Christian charity supporting Christians persecuted for their faith.
The organization states that one in seven Christians in the world face high levels of persecution. But that figure rises to one in five in Africa.
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Woman in Benue State Christian refugee camp. The camp is inhabited by Christians who fled anti-Christian violence. (Open Doors)
Nigeria
Africa’s most populous nation is also ranked as the seventh worst in the world for persecution in all its forms. According to Open Doors, out of the 4,849 Christians killed for their faith globally in the year up to the end of Sept. 2025, 3,490 of these were murdered in Nigeria — 72% of the total.
Muslims have also been killed in Nigeria. But the latest data from the report shows Christians have been “disproportionately targeted.” These are four of the affected states — there are others:
In Benue State in north-central Nigeria, 1,310 Christians were killed compared with 29 Muslims.
In Plateau State in north-central Nigeria, 546 Christians were killed compared with 48 Muslims.
In Taraba State in northeast Nigeria, 73 Christians were killed compared with 12 Muslims.
In north-western Kaduna State, 1,116 Christians were abducted in 2025, compared with 101 Muslims.
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Funerals for some 27 Christians who were reportedly killed by Islamist Fulani tribesmen in the village of Bindi Ta-hoss, Nigeria on July, 28, 2025 (Courtesy: Christian Solidarity International (CSI))
“The latest figures should leave us in no doubt: there is a clear religious element to this horrific violence,” Henrietta Blyth, CEO of Open Doors U.K. told Fox News Digital.
Blyth added, “For many thousands of Christians, this will come as no surprise. Those who witnessed their families being killed, and their homes razed to the ground by Islamist Fulani militants report being told by their attackers that ‘we will destroy all Christians.’”
“It’s surely time to dismiss the idea that this violence is somehow ‘random,’” Blyth stated. “If we don’t recognize the clear religious element to the violence, it won’t be possible to properly address this tragic situation.”
Mohammed Idris, Nigeria’s minister of information and national orientation, told Fox News Digital this week, “The loss of life in any form is unacceptable, and the Nigerian government recognizes the pain felt by all affected families and communities.”
Pope Leo XIV condemned the killings of up to 200 people in Yelewata community in Nigeria. (Associated Press)
The minister continued, “Nigeria has consistently maintained that its security challenges stem from a convergence of criminal insurgency, armed banditry, resource competition, and localized communal disputes, not from state-directed or institutional religious persecution. The government remains focused on upholding its constitutional duty to protect all citizens and on advancing security reforms that improve coordination, accountability, and civilian safety nationwide.”
At the time of writing, the new World Watch List had not been released to the minister, but he did share his thoughts on Middle Belt killings, “With respect to the Middle Belt states, the Nigerian government has long stated that violence in this region is primarily driven by long-standing disputes over land and resources, organized banditry, and criminal networks that prey on vulnerable communities, Christian and Muslim alike.”
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He concluded, “while some attacks tragically take on communal or identity dimensions, framing the Middle Belt crisis as a systematic campaign against Christians does not reflect the full security reality on the ground and risks obscuring the role of criminal actors who exploit instability for profit and power.”
The Evangelical church in Omdurman, Sudan after being bombed even though it was not in a combat zone or used by any warring forces. (Open Doors)
Sudan
Some 150,000 are estimated to have died in the civil war that has engulfed this nation since 2023. Open Doors reports, “the situation for the nation’s 2 million Christians is especially grim.”
“We are considered as the enemy by both (opposing) factions, who accuse us of being allied with the other side,” Rafat Samir, general secretary for the Sudan Evangelical Alliance, told Fox News Digital. We are told ‘you don’t belong here’ and driven from our homes. To make matters worse, Christians are often excluded when aid is distributed.” A particular pattern can be seen across sub-Saharan Africa, Open Doors states. The report claims, “Islamist militants enter the vacuums in law and order left by a weak junta and civil conflicts. It means they can operate with impunity across parts of Burkina Faso, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia, Niger and Mozambique. Their stated aim is to create ‘Sharia states’ operating under their deadly interpretation of Islamic law.”
Church leaders of the Pentecostal Church in the northeast of Khartoum, stood by as their church building was demolished. The demolition was done under the premise that any building not complying with regulations would be destroyed in July 2025 in Sudan. (Open Doors.)
Elsewhere in the world, North Korea remains top of the list for having the world’s worst persecution of Christians, with Open Doors stating, “If Christians are discovered, they and their families are deported to labor camps or executed.”
A huge spike in reported violence against Christians in Syria has followed the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s presidency in Dec. 2024, and has led the country to jump to number six on the list. China is number 17, with churches driven underground by surveillance and heavy regulation.
In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a Civil Defence worker inspects the damage inside Mar Elias church where a suicide bomber detonated himself in Dweil’a in the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Sunday June 22, 2025. (SANA via AP)
The reporting period for the World Watch List ended some two months before President Trump ordered U.S. forces to bomb Muslim militants in northwestern Nigeria on Christmas Day to try to stop the killing of Christians.
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Jo Newhouse from Open Doors sub-Saharan Africa, told Fox News Digital, “The U.S. airstrikes (against Jihadi groups in Nigeria) have thrown many of the militant groups in the area into a state of panic. They have been scattering and attacking civilians as they come across soft targets, hoping that they can rebuild their resources through looting and kidnapping.”
“Many Christians across the northern states are in a state of flux, unable to find any safety or stability. They bear the scars of living under the perpetual risk of death, destruction and displacement,” Newhouse said.
Published on
The European Parliament is set to hold a debate about the allocation of public defence funds to Hungary over fears that the money may be misused by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who faces a difficult election in April.
The money in question is part of the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) programme, a €150 billion loan scheme that enables member states to finance the purchase of defence equipment.
This is a part of the plan to boost Europe’s defences in the light of both Russian threats and the uncertainty of support from the United States.
Hungary has requested €17.4 billion in SAFE funds to boost its army. This would be the third biggest SAFE allocation among the member states, even though most of the EU’s regular payments to Hungary are suspended because of rule of law deficiencies and corruption risks.
The Greens in the European Parliament initiated the debate, which has gained the support of mainstream political parties.
“I’m really frustrated that the European Commission chose Hungary as the third largest beneficiary of this whole SAFE programme, which means that Hungary will get €16 billion for its defence industry without any human rights rule of law conditionality,” Greens-EFA MEP Tineke Strik told Euronews.
The debate will take place next Tuesday at the plenary session in Strasbourg, and will not be followed by a resolution.
Treading carefully
MEPs critical of Orbán argue that the EU should impose robust safeguards before transferring the SAFE funds to his government.
The EU has already suspended €17 billion out of €27 billion previously earmarked for Hungary, with payments made conditional on improvements in justice, rule of law and anti-corruption efforts.
EU budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin told the European Parliament last December that the same conditions might be applied to SAFE funds as well, but the 15% down payment could be allocated without conditions.
On Monday, Euronews reported that the European Commission has postponed most upcoming decisions related to Hungary in order to avoid any perception of interference in the current election campaign. But because boosting defence spending is a strategic goal of the von der Leyen Commission, SAFE is an exception.
If approved by the EU Council, the first of the defence payments could happen during the first quarter of this year, just before Hungary’s crucial parliamentary election on April 12.
“This is a huge present to Orbán, because he will get a big part of it before the elections in Hungary,” Strik said. “And because of the lack of conditions, he can use it for his own campaign and sell it as a sign of the legitimacy of his regime.”
“This is really a toxic present for democracy in Hungary.”
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