Emmanuel Macron’s re-election as French president is welcome news for France, Europe, the transatlantic alliance and liberal democracy.
Macron comfortably defeated far-right challenger Marine Le Pen and is the first French president to be re-elected since Jacques Chirac in 2002. He has now established himself as Europe’s most powerful leader at a time when the EU needs both strong leadership and unity. We must remember that, without France (or Germany) there is no Europe, so a lot was at stake in this election.
It is important first to look at the results of the first round of voting and what the implications are for France.
The results were as follows: Macron (Liberal, centrist), 27.84 per cent; Le Pen (far right), 23.15 per cent; Jean-Luc Mélenchon (France Unbowed, far-left), 21.95 per cent; Eric Zemmour (extreme right), 7.07 per cent; Valérie Pécresse (Republican, centre-right), 4.78 per cent; Yannick Jadot (Green), 4.63 per cent; Jean Lassalle (centrist), 3.13 per cent; Fabien Roussel (Communist), 2.28 per cent; Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Gaullist), 2.06 per cent; Anne Hidalgo (Socialist), 1.75 per cent; Phillippe Poutou (far left) 0.77; Nathalie Arthaud (Trotskyist, far left), 0.56 per cent.
Two issues are particularly worrying after the first-round voting. The first is the almost complete collapse of the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties, the Republicans and the Socialists, whose candidates received less than five per cent of the vote each. The second concern is that the combined vote of the far-right and far-left amounts to 55.78 per cent, a shocking figure which shows just how polarised France has become.
In the second round of voting, Macron got 58.54 per cent of the vote compared to 41.46 per cent for Le Pen. In a normal election this would have been regarded as a massive landslide for Macron but such a high level of support for Le Pen – the highest ever for a far-right candidate – should send out alarm bells. Furthermore, the abstention rate in the second round was 28 per cent and of those who voted 8.6 per cent cast blank votes – both record figures. Some serious soul-searching by Macron and other mainstream parties is now needed to see why so many voters are either not voting or backing parties on the fringes of the politician spectrum.
Macron’s first term in office was not easy. He had to deal with the ‘yellow vests protests’, the pandemic and, more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, he managed to get unemployment down to its lowest level in 14 years, he brought about important tax and labour market reforms and gave France a more dynamic role in EU affairs. He was unable to raise the retirement age to 65, as he had promised to do, but said he was now willing to compromise by raising this to 64.
Internationally, Macron represented France – and Europe – very well and played a leading role in trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal, doing his utmost to keep then US president Donald Trump firmly within the transatlantic alliance, working tirelessly to persuade Russia not to invade Ukraine and then rallying Europe to Kyiv’s defence in the aftermath of the Russian invasion.
Emmanuel Macron is now Europe’s leader- Anthony Manduca
Earlier this year, Macron proposed, on behalf of the French EU presidency, a new European collective security pact to deal with NATO and Russia. Sadly, Russia’s war in Ukraine removed the possibility of Moscow entering into any negotiations with the EU on a new security deal but, hopefully, this will be possible at some time in the future.
During the campaign, Macron was able to run on his reasonably good economic and foreign policy record, he promised to turn France into the world’s leading climate-neutral country and also called for bold EU reform which would allow countries that want to integrate further to move faster.
He has since gone a step further by proposing a European political community where democratic European nations cooperate in areas like security – the UK would be an obvious candidate.
Although Le Pen won a record number of votes for a far-right candidate, and some of her arguments did strike a chord with French voters – such as her emphasis on the increase in the cost of living – she was damaged by many of her incoherent economic policies, her links to Vladimir Putin, her proposals to turn the EU into a league of nations and the belief among many voters that she still harboured extreme right-wing views.
Macron must now reconnect with disaffected parts of society and recognise the hardships that many provincial towns and rural areas are going through. He also needs to focus more on integrating minorities into French society and to acknowledge people’s concerns over immigration without, of course, pandering to the far-right.
The president now faces another hurdle – next month’s parliamentary elections. Four left-wing parties – France Unbowed (the strongest of the four), the Greens, the Socialists and the Communists – have agreed to run as a united front in these elections and could possibly deprive Macon of his majority. Macron’s party, now called ‘Renaissance’, has formed a pact of its own with two other centrist parties, all of whom will run under the ‘Ensemble’ banner in June’s elections.
In France, the president is the pre-eminent figure in politics who appoints the prime minister, who, in turn, leads the government and in principle sets out its policies which, except in the case of cohabitation (when the president and prime minister are from different parties) are those of the president. While the president has the dominant say in foreign policy, it is the prime minister who is responsible for domestic policy.
It is, therefore, important for Macron to get his parliamentary majority, otherwise he might end up having to appoint a prime minister from the far-left or perhaps even the far-right (unlikely), which would mean Europe’s new leader starting his mandate with his wings clipped.