Emmanuel Macron in an “untenable position” (The New York Times). His “leadership” is “at risk” (AP). His “legitimacy” has “suffered” (Foreign Policy). French democracy is “in crisis” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). No, it is already “broken” (The Guardian).
Big, if true. (more…)
77 percent of all state aid approved in the EU last year went to French and German companies, according to figures from the European Commission.
The two countries, which have 40 percent of the European economy between them, benefited from a suspension of antitrust rules first put in place during COVID-19.
France would make the suspension permanent. Two years ago, the European Commission rejected such a French proposal. Now it is more sympathetic.
I have a story in the Netherlands’ Wynia’s Week about what France wants, why the European Commission changed its mind, and how France and Germany were able to take advantage of exemptions to the rules of the single market. Here is a summary for English readers. (more…)
Emmanuel Macron is moving forward with pension reform, and he’s right to.
Macron’s promise to reform pensions was one of the reasons the Atlantic Sentinel endorsed him for a second term. He has asked his government for a bill by Christmas, so the changes could go into effect next year. (more…)
My hunch was correct after all. Before the French elections, I argued the most likely outcome was Emmanuel Macron winning a second term as president but losing his majority in the National Assembly and being forced into a coalition with the center-right.
After the presidential election, Macron’s liberals moved up in the polls. They also did reasonably well in the opening round of the legislative elections a week ago. It gave this Macronist hope that the president might defend his majority after all.
But no. His alliance, Together, is projected to fall to 234 seats, down from the 350 it won in 2017 and 55 short of a majority.
So what happens next? (more…)
Emmanuel Macron has defeated Marine Le Pen for the second time. He is the first French president in twenty years to win reelection. The last was Jacques Chirac, who in 2002 defeated Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie.
Macron’s projected 58 percent support is down from the 66 percent he got in 2017.
He is also far less certain of winning another majority in the National Assembly, which puts his plans for a second term at risk.
Although the French presidency is one of the most powerful of its kind, without a parliamentary majority Macron might have to nominate a prime minister of another party (the French call this “cohabitation”) and could not cut taxes, invest €50 billion in green energy or raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. (more…)
Emmanuel Macron has suggested he could water down French pension reforms in a second term.
“I am clearly opening the door” to a retirement age of 64, he told BFM TV on Monday, adding that “65 years old was not a dogma.”
Germany and the Netherlands are raising their retirement ages from 65 to 67.
Macron also hinted he might call a referendum on the changes. “I don’t want to divide the country.”
What happened to the brave reformer? (more…)
This year’s French presidential election will be a rematch of the last. According to exit polls, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen have won the first voting round and will advance to the second in two weeks.
Ipsos and Sopra Steria give the incumbent 28 percent support and the far-right Le Pen 23 percent. The far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon would place third with 22 percent. The other candidates are in single digits.
Macron defeated Le Pen with 66 to her 34 percent in the 2017 election. Polls suggest this year’s runoff will be tighter.
Here are my takeaways from the first voting round. (more…)
When we endorsed Emmanuel Macron in 2017, it was because he was the best candidate to make France competitive and confident again. He has. French voters should give him a second term.
Macron relaxed French labor laws, which had been among the strictest in the world. Unemployment fell to a thirteen-year low. He eased auditing requirements, streamlined bankruptcy procedures and lowered social charges and taxes for entrepreneurs. Business creation rose 60 percent.
Foreign investors were impressed. Before the pandemic, France even overtook Germany and the United Kingdom as the top destination of foreign investment in Europe.
Opponents have lampooned Macron as a “president of the rich” for putting the economy first. But he also enrolled freelancers in public unemployment insurance, extended welfare to one million more households, and made dental services, eyeglasses and hearing aids free.
France became a leader again in Europe. Macron didn’t win every argument in Brussels, but the EU looks and sounds more French than it did five years ago. Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and Donald Trump’s isolationism have convinced the other member states to give France’s proposals for European “strategic autonomy” a chance. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has given European defense cooperation, long favored by the French, a new lease on life. With five more years, Macron could put those ideas into action. (more…)
Twelve candidates have qualified to compete in the French presidential election. Only six are polling at more than few percentage points. I will summarize their policies here, plus those of Anne Hidalgo. The mayor of Paris has just 2 percent support in recent surveys, but her Socialist Party could still be a force in the legislative elections in June.
The comparison reveals strange bedfellows. The centrist Emmanuel Macron and center-right Valérie Pécresse see eye to eye on asylum and pension reform. Macron’s climate policies are closer to the Green party’s candidate, Yannick Jadot. Jadot and the far-right Marine Le Pen emphasize animal welfare. Le Pen and the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon agree on renationalizing motorways. Mélenchon and the far-right Éric Zemmour believe NATO is obsolete.
(more…)
Emmanuel Macron is projected to place first in the opening round of the French presidential election in two weeks, which would make him the favorite for the runoff another two weeks later.
Macron has been in power since 2017 and is only the second of eight presidents who didn’t come from the Gaullist right or the Socialist left. “Liberal” is a dirty word in France, synonymous with Anglo-American capitalism, so Macron calls himself a “centrist” and a “progressive”. But he has governed as a liberal.
Here is an overview of his successes and failures. (more…)
Corsica was rocked by violent protests this month after Yvan Colonna, a Corsican nationalist, was attacked in a French prison by a fellow inmate. Colonna died of his wounds on Monday.
He was serving a life sentence in Arles, a small city west of Marseilles, for the murder of Claude Érignac, Corsica’s top regional official in 1998. Colonna had petitioned several times to be transferred to a Corsican prison but was denied every time.
Despite widespread condemnation across Corsican society of Érignac’s murder, Colonna was still viewed by many as a nationalist hero. The fact that he died in a prison in mainland France added insult to injury. As did the fact that he was killed by a convicted jihadist of African descent. Relations between Corsica’s native and immigrant populations have been tense for years. (more…)
Regular readers will know I’m a fan of Emmanuel Macron. He is probably the most liberal president France has had since the Second World War.
Macron abolished a left-wing wealth tax that raised little revenue, eased regulations on small and medium-sized businesses, reined in generous salaries and pensions at the state railway, relaxed France’s strict labor laws and extended unemployment insurance to the self-employed. This week, he unveiled plans to build up to fourteen nuclear power reactors by 2050 to free France of fossil fuels.
If he is reelected in April, Macron would have a chance to reform France’s bloated retirement system, something none of his immediate predecessors dared for fear of inciting protests.
The one area in which Macron has been unwilling to challenge French orthodoxies is trade. (more…)
The first round of the French presidential election is eight weeks away. (The French vote on Sundays.) It’s not for lack of interest that I haven’t written about it since early December. It’s that so little has changed.
I’ll take those one by one. (more…)
