How Is France Faring Under Macron?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

A year before he faces re-election for a second term, Emmanuel Macron’s chances to retain the French presidency remain no sure thing.

There is no denying that his is a personalist presidency, in the tradition of Charles de Gaulle. After beating the main old parties in 2017, Macron has governed by concentrating powers in his hands. He controls his own party, La République En Marche, in the National Assembly.

However, even apart from his less than stellar handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has fumbled other files.

In the autumn of 2018, public discontent unfolded in provincial and rural France in opposition to a new fuel tax supported by Macron’s government. By mid-November tens of thousands of people were protesting across France, and in early December there were violent clashes in Paris. A contrite Macron announced a withdrawal of the new levy and pledged that he had heard popular demands for change.

His approval ratings are mediocre and more than two-thirds of the electorate still regard him as an arrogant “président des riches.” French citizens see their public services in a depleted state, partly due to Macron’s reforms and budget cuts. The term déclinisme has become part of the French political discourse. Indeed, a majority of voters does not want him to run again in 2022.

The president retains one potential advantage: the fragmented political landscape which contributed to his election in 2017 remains largely unaltered. The Parti Socialiste and the Républicains, the old governing parties of the left and right, are still struggling to offer credible alternatives in terms of policies and leadership.

The Républicains have until late September to decide whether to hold an open primary vote to choose a candidate. Michel Barnier, the former EU chief negotiator on Brexit, has declared he will run.

Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, will decide about her candidacy later this month. Even if she runs, she will have a hard task uniting the left unless the Greens throw in their lot with her as a unity candidate. As well, the radical progressive Jean-Luc Mélenchon is expected to run again and he performed well in 2017.

On the right, the main challenger to Macron will again be Marine Le Pen. Her Rassemblement National has rebranded itself as a champion of the welfare state and a defender of French secularism, as a means by which to galvanize anti-Muslim voters. 

It continues to appeal to entrenched French fears about their social and economic security, and what they see as the dilution of their national identity by European integration and “Islamism.”

In the presidential election, if no one reaches 50 per cent in the first round, the top two candidates face each other two weeks later. But that means that the first round suddenly becomes crucial. What if Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon, and a Green-Socialist alliance candidate, are all hovering around the 20 per cent mark? Even a Le Pen-Mélenchon run-off is possible.

Faced with a populist challenge from Le Pen, Macron has move to the right himself. The National Assembly has passed a law against “separatism,” defined as threatening, intimidating or assaulting an elected official or a public-sector employee.

The bill was debated after three attacks last year by extremists, including the murder of a teacher. It extends the requirement of strict religious neutrality beyond civil servants to anyone who is a private contractor of a public service -- even bus drivers.

There is also some unrest in the military. Two open letters published in April and May in the conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles by more than 1,000 serving and retired French army officers denounced Muslim residents for fomenting “civil war” and trampling on France’s cultural heritage.

Warning that French authorities were conceding too much ground to “Islamism,” the texts hinted that the army would step in if politicians failed to restore order. The retired officers claimed that France was “disintegrating.”

This should be taken seriously. General de Gaulle himself came to power in 1958 during the Algerian Civil War with the support of elements in the armed forces. It was effectively a coup d’état. The Fifth Republic is 63 years old, but in France, constitutional longevity has been the exception, not the rule.