Macron closes his worst “annus horribilis” since becoming president

In June 2017, a few weeks after his first presidential election, Macron had 57% positive opinions among French people. Eight years later, last November, only 11% of French people had a good opinion of their president, while 84% distrusted the head of state. Only François Hollandehis predecessor in power, experienced a very low level of popular rejection.

Can Macron’s unpopularity improve or worsen, 17 months before the end of his presidential term? Everything seems to indicate that the situation could get worse. The unpopularity of the French president is due to institutional reasons and personal decisions.

The Constitution of the Fifth Republic grants the president exceptional powers enjoyed by no other president or head of state in any Western democracy. During the eight years of an unfinished double presidency, Macron “shared”, to a certain extent, the crucible of catastrophes which degraded national public life. But, at the same time, he personally took decisions of disastrous gravity for France and its institutional functioning.

Among the disasters relatively shared with their governments, there is a succession of serious crises, perceived with great concern by public opinion: “uncontrolled” immigration, rising violence on the outskirts of Paris and in the big cities, unprecedented economic crisis, threatening growth in state deficits and public debt, emergence of a multicultural France which profoundly modifies social relations, to the “benefit” of the extreme left and the extreme right, the two majority forces in the National Assembly, first chamber of Parliament.

Apocalyptic situation

In the economic field, the reference analyst Marc Touati sums up the crisis this way: “Macron has increased debt and deficits in a disastrous way. The national economic situation is that of “Apocalypse Now”, a disastrous “apocalypse”. And it can get worse, victim of an unprecedented political and institutional crisis.

In the political field, Gerard Courtoisformer director of Le Monde, adds: “With great ambitions during his first mandate, Macron was reduced to the insignificant position of a file manager, with very degraded credibility and legitimacy; a devalued president, locked in his certainties, myopic, far from reality, ready to endure whatever happens, disastrous.

François Villeroy de GalhauGovernor of the Bank of France, a canonical reference, summed up the “legacy” that Macron leaves with this sentence: “We find ourselves in a situation of absolute emergency”.

Re-elected president in April 2022, thanks to the support of socialists and communists, who wanted to avoid the election of Marine Le Pen as President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron He immediately found himself in a very uncomfortable personal political situation: without his own political party, supported by several centrist groups in conflict with each other. They had projects denounced by the entire left and the entire right. Faced with this scenario, Macron made the most catastrophic decision of his political life… the calling of early legislative elections in June and July 2024.

The president hoped that the French would give him a parliamentary political majority to be able to govern. Exactly the opposite happened: last year’s early legislative elections confirmed the participation of the Agrupación Nationale (AN, far right), the party of Marine Le Penfirst party in France, followed by La Francia Insumisa (LFI, far left), the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

France entered the most serious institutional crisis of the Regime, victim of a personal decision by Macron. For the first time in history, the far right had more votes and deputies than the entire left combined.

For the first time in the history of the Regime, the head of state was literally alone: ​​Macron had been unable to create his own party; The small parties that supported him did not have a majority and needed the support of the socialist left. Very majority, the extreme right has been a “victim” of the opposition of the rest of the national political forces.

Maze with no exit

Between July and September last year, France was without a government. An ultra-solitary president, alone, isolated, incapable of making practical or diplomatic decisions, in the absence of a minimum government, Macron ended up appointing Prime Minister. Michel Barnierpro-European conservative, former European commissioner.

It took three and a half months for Barnier to resign in December last year. His political contortions, his concessions to the left and the right, were quite insufficient to negotiate state budgets. Macron was forced to accept his resignation and appoint a new prime minister, François Bayrouvery old “chameleon” of national political life.

Bayrou remained in power for nine months, with a simply zero result: nine months lost for France, victim of a president with a government incapable of negotiating state budgets rejected by the rest of the national political forces.

At the beginning of September, Macron appointed his sixth head of government in a year and a half of crisis, Sébastien Lecornu, without government experience, who made numerous concessions to the socialists, without obtaining approval of national budgets. Macron was forced to accept the abandonment of his fragile reforms, such as lowering the retirement age to 62. A national and personal disaster with an international diplomatic cost which places the French president on the platform of gesticulating insignificance.

For many decades, the political construction of Europe was based on the defunct Franco-German axis, the complicity of France and Germany. Berlin ended up discovering the impossibility of carrying out major projects with a French president without the essential power to take executive decisions of a certain magnitude.

The economic crisis precipitated by macronism has placed France at the “tail” of the euro zone. The governments presided over by Macron have undermined national economic credibility, degraded by major international financial rating agencies, such as Moody’s and S&P.

Impossible to “intervene” on the national political scene, without a party, victim of harassment from both the right and the left, Macron tries to “take refuge” in international gesticulation, traveling and taking ultra-theoretical positions on major global issues, from Ukraine to Palestine, verbally criticizing Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, joining forces with the German chancellor, Frédéric Merzand the English Prime Minister, Keir Starmerwho are also not in very promising situations, victims of national crises of a different nature.

Macron’s second presidential term ends in spring 2027. A growing number of leading politicians and analysts are calling for his resignation, in an attempt to lead France out of the ongoing historic crisis. Macron systematically confirms that he will reach the end of his mandate, without in any way excluding new government crises, if Marine Le Pen and the far left do not decide to present and vote on a motion of censure demanding early legislative elections.