French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion to call snap par­li­men­ta­ry elec­tions af­ter his par­ty’s crush­ing de­feat in the Eu­ro­pean par­lia­men­tary vote, in­sist­ing on Wednes­day that vot­ers will ul­ti­mate­ly choose the “pro­gres­sive bloc” over the far-right.

In France, leg­isla­tive elec­tions de­cide the make­up of the par­lia­ment, not the oc­cu­pant of the pres­i­den­tial El­y­see Palace. Macron has a pres­i­den­tial man­date un­til 2027, and said he would not step down be­fore the end of his term.

The somber-look­ing French leader said his move to call ear­ly polls — the vot­ing will take place in two rounds, on June 30 and Ju­ly 7 — showed his “con­fi­dence” in the French peo­ple. He urged mod­er­ate politi­cians from the left and the right to re­group with his own cen­trist al­liance to de­feat the far-right.

“I think the French are in­tel­li­gent, they see what’s be­ing done, what’s co­her­ent and what’s not, and they know what to do,” Macron said. He added: “I don’t be­lieve at all that the worst can hap­pen. You see, I’m an in­de­fati­ga­ble op­ti­mist.”

The 46 year-old ad­dressed French vot­ers in his first news con­fer­ence since his stun­ning Sun­day de­ci­sion to dis­solve the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, France’s low­er house of par­lia­ment, af­ter the far-right Na­tion­al Ral­ly par­ty of Ma­rine Le Pen tri­umphed at the vote for the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment.

Macron sought to ad­dress con­cerns of those who fear the risky move could re­sult in the French far-right lead­ing gov­ern­ment for the first time since World War II.

Since Sun­day evening, crowds have been gath­er­ing every day in Paris and across the coun­try to protest against the Na­tion­al Ral­ly.

Macron was adamant in his faith in the vot­ers to refuse to choose the ex­tremes of both sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum. He as­sured that he was not falling in­to de­featism and said he would serve out his sec­ond pres­i­den­tial term re­gard­less of the out­come of the leg­isla­tive vote.

Macron said his de­ci­sion is “about al­low­ing po­lit­i­cal forces cho­sen by the French to be able to gov­ern.” He added that it’s “awk­ward to think it has to be the ex­treme right or po­lit­i­cal ex­tremes. Or maybe you’ve got the spir­it of de­feat spread every­where.”

“If that’s what peo­ple are afraid of, it’s time now to take ac­tion,” he said.

Macron jus­ti­fied his de­ci­sion by the fact that he could not ig­nore the new po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ty af­ter his pro-Eu­ro­pean par­ty was hand­ed a chas­ten­ing de­feat and gar­nered less than half the sup­port of the Na­tion­al Ral­ly with its star leader, Jor­dan Bardel­la.

Un­like in his re­cent na­tion­al ad­dress­es in which Macron fo­cused on Rus­sia’s war in Ukraine and ways Eu­rope should forge a com­mon de­fense pol­i­cy, in­de­pen­dent of the Unit­ed States, and shore up trade pro­tec­tions against Chi­na, the French pres­i­dent stuck to his coun­try’s in­ter­nal is­sues fa­vored by the surg­ing right, in­clud­ing curb­ing im­mi­gra­tion, fight­ing crime and Is­lam­ic sep­a­ratism in France.

Macron, who is in his sec­ond and last pres­i­den­tial term, said he hopes vot­ers will band to­geth­er to con­tain the far-right in na­tion­al elec­tions in a way they didn’t in Eu­ro­pean ones. He called on “men and women of good­will who were able to say ‘no’ to ex­tremes on the left and the right to join to­geth­er to be able to build a joint project” for the coun­try.

“Things are sim­ple to­day: we have un­nat­ur­al al­liances at both ex­tremes, who quite agree on noth­ing ex­cept the jobs to be shared, and who will not be able to im­ple­ment any pro­gram,” Macron said.

While he seemed to project the kind of en­thu­si­asm that helped bring him to the pres­i­den­cy in 2017, an­a­lysts say French vot­ers are more pes­simistic about their fu­ture, and see Macron as in­creas­ing­ly out of touch with re­al life and pock­et­book prob­lems.

The French pres­i­dent ac­knowl­edged some faults com­mit­ted by his pro-busi­ness cen­trist par­ty while harsh­ly crit­i­ciz­ing some con­ser­v­a­tives who have de­cid­ed to team up with Le Pen’s Na­tion­al Ral­ly, which has a his­to­ry of racism and xeno­pho­bia. He scathing­ly called an al­liance formed by par­ties on the left as “un­usu­al and in­co­her­ent” af­ter they in­clud­ed the hard-left France Un­bowed of Jean-Luc Mé­len­chon who, Macron said “jus­ti­fied an­ti-Se­mit­ic poli­cies” in the wake of the Is­rael-Hamas war.

While sharp dif­fer­ences be­tween par­ties re­main on ei­ther side of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum, promi­nent fig­ures call­ing for a unit­ed front ap­pear to have one thing in com­mon: They don’t want to co­op­er­ate with Macron.

De­spite their di­vi­sions, left-wing par­ties agreed late Mon­day to form an al­liance that in­cludes the Greens, the So­cial­ists, the Com­mu­nists and the far-left France Un­bowed.

Le Pen is work­ing to con­sol­i­date pow­er on the right in ef­forts to trans­late the Eu­ro­pean tri­umph in­to a na­tion­al win and come clos­er to claim­ing pow­er. Her par­ty is ex­pect­ed to win the most French seats in the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment, po­ten­tial­ly as many as 30 of France’s 81.