After a first term marked by the pandemic and the energy crisis, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, also does not see the light at the end of the tunnel at the start of the second. This Monday marks six months since the investiture act of the centrist leader on May 7 with which he began his second five-year term. Although during the presidential campaign in the spring he promised the beginning of “a new era” and “new conquests”, the lack of definition and wear of his figure, both nationally and internationally, marked these beginnings of “Macron II”. Quite a contrast to the “Macron I”.
Emboldened by the aura of novelty and youth, the centrist leader began his presidency at full throttle: labor market reform, tax reductions for large fortunes, reform of the SNCF railway company (despite the opposition of its militant workers)… He carried out the neoliberal measures that his predecessors —Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy or François Hollande— had not dared to apply. His lyrical speeches generated applause in the international press, especially in the media of the establishment What The Economist who introduced him as the “savior of europe“.
“Loss of attraction power”
Five years later, the situation has undergone a Copernican turn for Macron, with an approval of only 27% of the French, his level of lowest popularity in the last two and a half years. “I think that the original sin of his current situation, in which he has lost power of attraction, was the presidential campaign in which he did not want to go into combat”, nor participate in numerous debates to explain his project, says François-Xavier Bourmaud, the journalist that covers the Elysee for The Figaro.
East catenaccio election served the centrist leader to achieve a more comfortable re-election than expected. Then, however, he paid the price in the June legislative elections, when he lost an absolute majority in Parliament, a very unusual scenario in France.
Despite that vote of punishment, he opted for governing in the minority and legislating through specific agreements, especially with The Republicans (LR, related to the PP in France), or by government decree. Until seven motions of censorship have been debated in the National Assembly since June, most of them in response to the use of the controversial article 49.3 that allows pass laws without parliamentary voteas happened with the 2023 budget. All of them failed, but some stayed close to the threshold of votes that would have forced a change of government. Thus it became clear that the Macronist Executive is in the hands of the oppositiondivided between the left-wing coalition of NUPES, the Republican right and Le Pen’s extreme right.
“I would like it to cross the Rubicon more clearly,” the former Conservative president said in an interview in late October. Nicholas Sarkozywho asked Macron for a greater effort to form a Coalition government with LR. The centrist leader said on October 26 that he “wanted there to be an alliance,” but this does not excite the current leaders of the Republican right or generate unanimity in macronismo. Given this limited room for manoeuvre, the possibility of a dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of early legislative elections begins to plan on Gallic politics.
Chirac’s precedent
These drastic measures contrast, however, with Macron’s supposed desire to govern in a different way in his second term, with a more dialogic style and without ignoring the unions and the opposition. To do this, he announced with great fanfare the creation of a National Refoundation Council, an organization weighed down by the opposition’s boycott and media disinterest.
Neither did the Executive’s decision to requisition refineries and weaken the Total workers’ strike, which left a third of the gas stations. Nor the fact of taking it for granted that at the beginning of next year it will adopt a pension reform which will lengthen the minimum retirement age from 62 to 65 years old (with 43 listed).
One of Macron’s obsessions is not to become a invisible president. That’s how it happened to Jacques Chirac in his second term (2002-2007) when he earned the reputation of the “lazy king” for the absence of draft measures. At the Elysée, they do not want to dedicate themselves solely to the management of “it is what it is” —inflation Y energy crisis—. In part, this explains the willingness to carry out an unpopular pension reform, despite a growing social unrest by an increase in prices —of 7.1% in general and 9.9% in the case of food— that has not decreased in recent months, unlike what happened in Spain, and that has not been seen offset by wage increases.
The war of succession
“Macron continues to play Macron and it hasn’t been updated much. I find these difficulties in renewing itself ideologically surprising, taking into account the current exceptional circumstances and the fact that it does not have a majority in the Assembly”, states the political scientist Christophe Bouillaud. Macronism “faces the crisis of the 21st century with the ideas of the end of the 20th century”, adds this professor at Sciences Po Grenoble about a centrist leader who often gives the impression of wanting to return to the neoliberal path of the beginning of his presidency, although the current situation has changed a lot compared to 2017.
Related news
In fact, the Macronist Executive has opposed some of the fashionable policies in Europe in recent months, such as a special tax on “superdividends” or invest 12,000 million euros in the energy renovation of buildings. And that some of these proposals were formulated by centrist deputies, which reflects the dissensions within macronismo.
“The war of succession It has already started,” Bourmaud recalls of all those Macronist leaders and their circles who are already thinking about the 2027 presidential elections, in which Macron will not be able to run due to the legal limit. The former prime minister Edouard Philippethe Minister of Economy, Bruno LeMairethe interior, Gerald Darmaninthe veteran Francois Bayrou… The lists with the names of the potential candidates to succeed him are common in the French press. It cannot be ruled out that macronism is divided into more than one candidacy. “This succession war has started much earlier than expected. The president hoped to have a period of truce until the European elections in 2024, but in the end this truce only lasted two months,” highlights the journalist from The Figaro.