Macron’s ‘revolution’ faces a reckoning now

Could the re-election campaign of France’s President Emmanuel Macron be any less inspiring? As French voters go to the polls on April 10 for the first of two voting rounds, gone is the enthusiasm or interest in the election of 2017, when Macron came to power as the youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte, with a new party promising to sweep out the establishment, knock out a rising Europhobic far right and bring about a liberal “revolution.”
Yet this year the stakes for France, Europe and the world are even higher in many ways. With Germany’s new coalition government still finding its footing after the Angela Merkel era, the European Union’s second biggest economy and only nuclear power could well be leading the continent’s response to a high Covid-19 debt load, a brutal war on Europe’s doorstep and a costly shift away from fossil fuels.
It’s not just the combination of pandemic and war that is smothering excitement on the campaign trail. Macron has changed his tune — the former disruptor is being cast as protector-in-chief by an entourage seeking to keep him above the fray.
Wags have named it the “eiderdown” plan: sleepy, safe and padded with budget giveaways. Macron’s legacy and leadership are to speak for themselves. He’s avoiding debates with rivals.
The ennui was evident at a recent campaign stop in Avesnes-sur-Helpe, a small town 20 minutes from the Belgian border. As a few locals hurled anti-Macron insults outside the red brick building, a parade of panjandrums rose up inside to defend Macron’s record before an audience of 150 voters, local officials and party faithful. Despite being “unlucky,” facing protests, a pandemic and now a war on his watch, they said, Macron had delivered reforms, tax cuts and spending that had changed France for the better.
Warning of the rise of his far-right nemesis Marine Le Pen, a dangerously close second in the polls, one minister asked: “Who do you want in charge?”
Attendees applauded and joined the president’s crew in a lusty rendition of the Marseillaise. The appeal to centrist values and crisis management has been enough to keep Macron top in the polls, but not enough to stop Le Pen climbing by the day. Voter apathy has been contagious, with turnout projected at a record low.
Which begs a question: If a candidate is running on his record, what should we make of Macron’s legacy after five years in power? To what extent has his mission to transform France succeeded? And could it all be reversed by a far-right resurgence?
Compared with the stasis of the past 20 years, France has certainly seen changes. Energised by reforms, its economy has weathered the Covid storm better than others; it ranks fifth in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience index. France’s influence in Europe has risen. All that has happened even as its establishment political parties have steadily declined.
Political polarisation and social divisions, meanwhile, have deepened. They could produce a late election upset by Le Pen. And even if Macron wins, these forces won’t disappear.
“The tensions on display during the last presidential term have been unheard of, and only a pandemic was able to keep them relatively contained,” Jean-Philippe Derosier, of Lille University, said last month. Macron the revolutionary delivered change, but he may not avoid another revolution before long.
One change Macron can claim is the performance and perception of France’s economy, long caricatured as a basket case. Even after protests that stopped his reform agenda, and a pandemic that dealt the worst recession since World War II, he’s left the economy in better shape than he found it.
Unemployment is at a 15-year low, economic growth is outpacing Germany’s and corporate investment has rebounded.

—Bloomberg