by N. Peter Kramer
Sunday September 30, the front-page headline of Le Monde, the French quality newspaper says: ‘Facing the difficulties, Macron changes his way of working’.
Rapidly losing his popularity, the French President decided to work on a less provocative attitude and to be less ‘imperial’.
‘In the eyes of the French people, the President became too arrogant and lost his popularity’, the newspaper writes.
It is clear, the French are disappointed in their young President.
His popularity is lower than that of his predecessors, the Republican Sarkozy and after him the Socialist Francois Hollande, at the same moment in their legacy.
And Hollande had already hit the lowest point ever.
In the spring of 2017, Emmanuel Macron promised the French the return of the entrepreneurs, the proliferation of innovation centres buzzing with young programers and the arrival of European headquarters of big multinationals.
Ambitious reforms would create the most liberal and dynamic market of all developed countries. With President Macron, France would become the ‘start-up’ country and a big friend of enterprise.
In May 2017, the French elected Macron as their President for the next five years. A few months later they provided him with a majority for his party, La Republique en marche (The Republic en marche), in the Assemblee nationale, the French House of Commons. But seventeen months after Macron’s bombastic arrival in the presidential palace L’Elysee, it is becoming clear that ‘Project Macron’ is failing…
Recent statistics on the French economy are disastrous. Growth is only 0,2%, a figure much lower, than for instance, that of the UK embroiled in Brexit problems. Industrial production is declining and on a lower level than in 1998.
Retail business is decreasing; the French victory at the World Championship Football has not had any stimulating effect.
In 2017 the unemployment rate was decreasing, but in the 2nd quarter of 2018 83.000 new jobseekers were registered. Investment in France is declining sharply.
No doubt, Macron has turned the French political landscape upside down. His election campaign instigated a wave of optimism and sympathy in France. With Brexit, Paris would become the financial centre of the EU.
‘La France est de retour’ (France is on the way back up), he told his country. Together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron would change the rules of the EU and put France in the lead. It was an overwhelming, modern, optimistic campaign, that seduced a majority of French women and men to vote for him.
Luck was on Macron’s side as well. His political opponents were trapped in scandals or dogmatism; and the most important one, Marine Le Pen of the Front National, strangled herself by the way she performed in the most important television debate. The rule is, you are as strong as your opponents are weak.
But after his victory, Macron behaved like an absolute monarch. He planned to make his wife, his former highschool teacher, a kind of vice-president. He used the Palace of Versailles for meetings with foreign heads of state. He dined with his close friends in the posh restaurant La Rotonde in Paris and spoke in very denigrating terms about the average French.
Many ministers quit or had to quit the government, led by Macron’s squire Edouard Philippe. The most tragic loss for Macron was the stepping down of Nicolas Hulot, one of France’s most popular television personalities.
As a convinced and convincing ecologist, Hulot told the public that he could not reconcile with his conscience to stay in a government with no interest at all in the environment.
And there is so much more. The scandal around Macron’s personal bodyguard, who whilst in a police uniform, beat up innocent demonstrators. Or announcing like a bolt out of the blue that the pensions of millions of elderly French people were no longer index linked.
French mayors are quitting in droves, double the number as during the previous legislature, because of new restrictive rules and unprecedented financial containment for municipalities.
Macron likes to play the EU card; he would like to change EU rules to receive more money for his country. But his buddy Angela Merkel’s position is eroding and many EU government leaders dislike his arrogant attitude towards them.
In the meantime, the French people are not interested at all in the EU. Their priority is how much money they have to spend and the quality of education and health care.
