French President Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the leftist New Popular Front, have decided to collaborate in the second round to prevent the conservative Rassemblement National party from winning a majority. The two parties have agreed to drop some candidates in races that would otherwise have three-way runoffs between the NFP, Macron’s Ensemble Party, and the RN.

The move sparked outrage among many in France, with RN’s candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, calling it “an alliance of dishonor,” citing Mélenchon’s extremism. Likewise, Stéphane Le Rudulier, a senator of the center-right Les Républicains, likewise condemned Macron’s decision as “morally insupportable and democratically abject.” Le Figaro, a center-right newspaper, ran an article describing the Macron-Mélenchon alliance as “la coalition des Tartuffe,” using a word meaning a faux-virtuous hypocrite. 

Recently, the New Popular Front has been criticized for some of the extremist actions of its candidates, which include lengthy criminal files for anti-police activities, defenses of Hamas, anti-white racism and antisemitism, and violent threats directed at women attending a vigil for a teacher slain by ISIS. Last week, Mélenchon came under further criticism for defending signs such as one stating “one dead cop = one less vote for the RN.” Mélenchon has also accused “those who call themselves the ethnic French” of “posing a serious problem to the cohesion of society.”

Macron’s decision to collaborate with parties to his left is a reversal from his previous position. Macron and his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal criticized the Socialist Party this week for working with the far left. Attal referred to the Socialist pact with the left as an “accord of shame.”

Macron and Attal, however, are still ruling out forming a governing coalition with the left, insisting that they will work to pass legislation on a case-by-case basis.