His re-election by a much narrower margin than five years ago is not only due to the erosion of power, but also because he is a president who, instead of reconciling the French as he had promised to do, has left deep divisions in the country.
Emmanuel Macron won the elections in 2017 promising a renewal of political life and the overcoming of the traditional left-right axis. His re-election by a much narrower margin than five years ago is not only due to the erosion of power, but also because he is a president who, instead of reconciling the French as he had promised to do, has left deep divisions in the country.
Born in Amiens (northern France) in 1977, Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is the son of doctors. Brilliant student. He studied philosophy before entering the prestigious National School of Administration (ENA), a breeding ground for French presidents, politicians and high-ranking officials.
He was a finance and labor inspector for the Rothschild bank. In 2012 he was appointed deputy general secretary at the Elysée and between August 2014 and August 2016 he was Minister of Economy of the socialist president François Hollande. In April 2016, when few believed in him, he founded the “En Marcha” movement, with which he achieved victory in the presidential elections of May 2017 against the far-right Marine Le Pen, his rival also in these elections.
This former banker and former minister became the youngest president of the Fifth Republic at the age of 39. His electoral victory in 2017 stemmed the wave of populist discontent that brought Republican Donald Trump to the White House and led to Brexit, the UK’s departure from the European Union. The pro-European Macron brought fresh air and injected a dose of optimism in France and in Europe at a time when he needed it.
On a personal level, he married Brigitte Trogneux (now Brigitte Macron) in 2007, who is 24 years older than him. They met in Amiens when she was his drama teacher and he was a student at the Jesuit college La Providence. She, who belonged to a well-known family of chocolatiers from Amiens, was married at the time. His love story surprised many.
His admirers consider him to be a cultured, charismatic, dynamic, daring politician with a great capacity for oratory. His detractors see him as arrogant, authoritarian, ambitious, unsympathetic, ultraliberal, and have labeled him “president of the rich.”
five years of crisis
His five years at the Elysée Palace have not been easy. The crises have forged him as president, says Macron. His presidency has been marked by successive crises: from the “yellow vest” protests to the war in Ukraine, passing through transport strikes, protests against pension reform, terrorist attacks, the health crisis and anti-vaccine protests. .
The “yellow vests” put his presidency in check with their weekly protests, many of them violent, against the rise in fuel prices. To tackle the crisis, he ended up making concessions and organizing a great national debate.
One of the terrorist attacks that has marked his presidency was the beheading of secondary school teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist for having shown his students controversial cartoons of Muhammad in class.
During his five years in the Elysee, Macron has managed to reduce unemployment – which has gone from 9.5% in June 2017 to 7.4% at the end of 2021, according to official figures -, has carried out multiple reforms and has lowered the taxes. But he was forced to postpone the pension reform. He also failed to reduce public spending, as he had promised to do in 2017.
Despite somewhat chaotic beginnings, the French are generally satisfied with their handling of the Covid pandemic, “the most serious health crisis France has known for a century,” in their own words. I do not hesitate to confine the country three times, he was one of the first world leaders to order a return to school after the first confinement and applied his policy of “whatever it costs”, that is, spending all the public money necessary to avoid the fall of the French economy in the worst of the pandemic.
It also organized mass vaccination of the population and imposed the Covid certificate to enter many public places. This raised the ire of the anti-vaccine movement, which organized numerous protests against Macron’s “health dictatorship”.
His “macronadas”, controversial phrases that he releases from time to time and without mincing words, have caused several controversies. For example, when she said to an unemployed person: “I’m crossing the street and I’ll find you a job.” Or she admitted that he wanted to “annoy to the end” the unvaccinated. Or when he described the French as «Gauls, resistant to change».
In foreign policy, he failed in his attempt to mediate between Moscow and kyiv to avoid a conflict, but no one can say that he has not tried. He declared the “brain death” of NATO. He announced the withdrawal of French troops from Mali. And he bet heavily on the European Union.
“President until the last quarter of an hour,” as he said. He was the last to officially announce his candidacy, as he was very busy with the Ukrainian crisis and the rotating presidency of the EU. “Candidate until the last minute”, he fought for his re-election and to prevent the extreme right from coming to power in France.
Admired by many French and hated by others, he has seen the growth of an anti-Macron front in recent weeks, which his rival, Marine Le Pen, has tried to court in the electoral campaign to attract votes.
His second term is announced as complicated, as was the first, since many of those who voted for him this Sunday did not do so out of conviction, but to prevent the arrival of the extreme right to power in France. Many far-left voters said before the elections that they would vote for him on April 24 and that on the 25th they would be in the streets protesting against his policies. If he expected a second term calmer than the first, it does not seem that the street is going to give him a truce.
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