Europe breathes a sigh of relief, British weekly wrote The Economist in May 2017, after Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were fresh in my mind. But France had chosen a young, energetic politician who believed that you shouldn’t fight populism by bowing, as the mainstream parties had often done. To Marine Le Pen he defended his own optimistic, liberal and pro-European agenda. He thus became the great hope of liberal Europe. That’s how it could be!
France goes to the polls again on Sunday. Emmanuel Macron’s reputation as a guide to the European center has deteriorated considerably, although he will probably survive. In polls for the newspapers Le Monde and Les Echos he stands at 56 percent. But after five years of Macron, French populism is bigger than ever. Marine Le Pen achieved 33 percent in 2017, which was already an unprecedented score at the time. Now it stands at 44 percent. And what will it be like in five years, in the apresMacron?
In many ways, Macron has not done badly. Unemployment fell from 9.6 to 7.4 percent. In the rest of Europe, unemployment fell just as fast, but still: since 2008, there haven’t been that many French people in work. A record number of companies were founded. His policies were more social than is often said. He raised the minimum wage and lowered taxes, boosting the purchasing power of the French, including those on the lowest incomes – at least before inflation in recent months. School classes were reduced in deprived areas. According to figures from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), no country spends as much money on the social protection of its citizens as France.
Electorally, Macron survived. He won more votes in the first round than in 2017, while his predecessor François Hollande was so unpopular that he did not even stand for re-election.
reconcile France
Yet he failed in what he saw as his greatest mission. Before the elections of 2017, he released his book Revolution off, subtitled Reconcilier la France‘Reconcile France’. He wanted not only to bring the different population groups closer together, but also to reconcile France with globalization, ‘the world as it is’. Macron wanted to ‘liberate France’s energy’, create a nation of flexible and enterprising citizens who would ’embrace modernity’ and stop clinging to a social model that was clearly no longer working, with unemployment at around 10 percent.
Five years ago, the feasibility of his program was already questioned. Cities like Paris, Bordeaux or Toulouse would undoubtedly benefit, but what did Macron have to offer ailing industrial towns and run-down villages? Too little, as it turned out. In all Western countries, the gap between city and periphery, between the higher and lower educated, is an unresolved problem. But nowhere did the elite city take on such a clear face as in France. No head of government seems to arouse as much hatred as Emmanuel Macron.
Early in his tenure, he made a few decisions that haunted him for five years. He abolished the wealth tax, resulting in a significant improvement for the highest incomes. Almost at the same time, he lowered the rent subsidy by 5 euros per month. No one in his entourage seemed to realize that 5 euros is a lot of money for some people. The verdict was quickly passed: Macron is a president of the richesa president for the rich.
‘He annoys the people’
That judgment was reinforced by his style. Macron believed that the French want an elected king. No Monsieur Normal like his predecessor Hollande, who was called ‘Flamby’, after the soft supermarket pudding.
But King Macron distanced too much from his people. Many saw him as an authoritarian and haughty leader who despised the common Frenchman. In the regional newspaper L’Union Journalist Caroline Lhaïk described Macron’s distaste as class hatred: ‘He embodies the good student who succeeds in everything, who has never suffered, who has never been screwed; he speaks too good English, (…) he does everything right, he is a handsome boy and that annoys people because they do not recognize themselves in him.’
The opposition between left and right is outdated, Macron said in 2017. The new divide is between those who see globalization as a threat and those who see globalization as an opportunity. Macron has failed to convince the French that globalization is an opportunity. Many see his liberalism as an Anglo-Saxon ideology, unsuitable for a country where its citizens want to be protected by the state.
By presenting himself as a champion of the open society, opposite Le Pen, he has wiped out the other middle parties. However, his strategy is risky: populist nationalism remains as the main alternative. If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected on Sunday, he will have another five years to reconcile France and stop the growth of the far right. That task has only become more difficult since the Yellow Vest Rebellion, given the increasing revulsion he experienced in his first five years.