President Emmanuel Macron, once the wunderkind of globalism, has become one of France’s most deeply unpopular leaders. Nevertheless, he continues to advance globalist projects like an expanding European Union, recently telling British Prime Minister Andy Burnham “welcome back” after he expressed his openness to reversing Brexit. Macron even claimed Brexit was “the biggest lie of the last 30 years.”
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Ironically, Macron is presenting European integration for Britain at a time when not only is the European project failing, but his own country is descending into chaos. French polling shows he is historically unpopular, with just 16 percent of the French favorable to him. So how did the face of globalism become one of the most hated leaders in the world?
Making of Macron: The Insider Presented as an Outsider.
Following his graduation in 2004 from France’s elite École Nationale d’Administration, Macron took a job in France’s vast civil service at the Inspectorate General of Finance, where he spent four years before joining the investment banking industry, where he worked for the powerful Rothschild & Cie Banque in 2008. Within the span of just two years, he became a managing partner of the firm and, between 2008 and 2012, helped carry out important deals worth billions of euros with global corporations like Nestlé.
Macron left banking in 2012, transitioning into politics by serving in the deeply unpopular socialist President Francois Hollande’s government as deputy secretary-general and then as economy minister from 2014 to 2016. Hollande was the most unpopular French president of the Fifth Republic, leaving office with a four percent approval rating.
Despite his ties to the unpopular Hollande regime, Macron distanced himself by creating a new movement ahead of the 2017 presidential elections, called En Marche! (“On the Move”) and presenting himself as somewhat of a political outsider. He made it clear that he believes in globalism, European integration, and technocratic government. He decisively defeated populist then-Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, 66.06 percent to 33.94 percent, after the establishment rallied around him following the collapse of old parties like the Socialists and the notionally conservative Les Républicains.
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First Term: Jupiter Comes Back to Earth.
Upon taking power, Macron began presenting himself as a semi-monarchical president, going as far as to call himself “Jupiter” after the king of the Roman gods, and declaring that his mind was so complex that journalists could not understand it. The “Jupiterian” style of governing was meant to reflect a strong presidency and a president unafraid to use the broad executive power of the French presidential office, while limiting his interactions with the press and other political figures to remain “above” them.
Coupled with a majority in the legislature, Macron set out to make reforms to France’s labor regulations, abolish the wealth tax on financial assets, and cut housing benefits. He also championed greater “European integration,” meaning the surrender of more national sovereignty to European Union agencies.
The wind appeared to be at Macron’s back in the early days of his presidency, with a lack of any serious, organized political opposition. However, this lasted only a little over a year, when November of 2018 changed everything.
A tax on fuel was the catalyst for one of the longest-lived protests in modern French history. The Gilets Jaunes, or “Yellow Vests,” were a spontaneous movement of regular people across the political spectrum who were fed up with cost-of-living increases in the country. The fuel tax especially hurt those living in rural areas and small French towns, as they relied on fuel to work and travel.
Gilet Jaunes marching for the 25th consecutive week. A movement of workers fighting for greater democracy, economic justice and national sovereignty. Totally ignored by the ‘internationalist’ British Left. (They’re just a bit *too* working-class, you see.) pic.twitter.com/6LrneaSlu1
— Paul Embery (@PaulEmbery) May 4, 2019
Every Saturday from November 17 to June 28, 2020, Yellow Vest protesters took to the streets of Paris and other major cities and towns across France. At the height of the protests in 2018, Macron even considered fleeing Paris via helicopter amid rumors that protesters could storm the Elysee Palace.
Ultimately, Macron backed off on the fuel tax increase, announced a series of economic concessions, and then the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to outdoor gatherings, ending the protests. Many thought at the time that Macron’s popularity had hit its lowest point, but eight years later, his popularity is even lower than it was at the height of the Gilets Jaunes movement.
On the international stage, Macron called for Europe to exercise greater autonomy, especially from the United States, and he has been a major proponent of a single European army. During his first term, he also repeatedly engaged with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the issue of Ukraine, but he was wholly unable to prevent or resolve the war in 2022. In the end, Macron’s desire to make France a major diplomatic power was hampered by France’s inability to actually determine anything among the major powers.
Second Term: Survival, Failed Gambles, and Decline.
France’s 2022 presidential election came as the country was just emerging from some of the strictest COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions in Europe. It played out largely as a repeat of 2017, with Macron facing and defeating Marine Le Pen, but this time by a smaller margin of 58.55 percent to 41.45 percent.
The French parliament, which usually sees the president’s party win a majority, was another story altogether. Macron’s movement, now renamed Renaissance, fell 44 seats short of a majority due to the rise of the National Rally, as Le Pen’s Front National was now called, and Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES), a broad leftist coalition. Macron’s ability to govern the country alone had ended.
The largest and most ambitious reform of Macron’s second term was his attempt to raise the French retirement age from 62 to 64. When Macron finally pushed the reform through without a parliamentary majority vote in 2023, thanks to an enabling power in the French constitution, France erupted into strikes, riots, and enormous protests that lasted more than four months. As with the Gilets Jaunes, Macron eventually halted the reform, pausing the increase in the retirement age until at least 2027, after the next presidential election. It was yet another major defeat, this time of the only major reform of Macron’s second term.
Macron has found it difficult to introduce any other reforms or even govern the country effectively due to a 2024 gamble that spelled the end for his political project. In the spring of that year, the European Parliament elections saw Marine Le Pen and the National Rally easily win the most seats in France, with 31.37 percent of the vote, more than double Macron’s bloc, which won 14.60 percent and came in second place.
In response, Macron gambled everything by calling a snap French parliamentary election, which was held in late June and July of that year. Once again, however, Macron’s bloc could not secure a majority in the parliament. In fact, they did not even come first. The election was won by the leftist NUPES bloc, which also failed to win a majority. Le Pen, National Rally, and their allies also increased their seat count in the parliament from 89 seats to 142.
While trying to gain stability domestically, Macron had unleashed even more instability, and this was reflected in the tenure of his Prime Ministers, of which there have been four in the last two years. Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his government, for example, lasted barely three months before a no-confidence vote, pushed by Marine Le Pen, relieved him of his duties.
Macron’s second-term foreign policy has fared no better, with France effectively kicked out of the Sahel region in Africa, as coups and upheaval in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have led to Russia-aligned governments that no longer wish to have a French military presence.
Unable to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Macron has been ineffective in his attempts to end the conflict, though he has constantly presented himself as Europe’s principal interlocutor on the issue. Macron has become increasingly hostile to Russia, sometimes suggesting he may send French troops to Ukraine, though this has yet to happen. His relationship with President Donald J. Trump also soured following Trump’s second term election victory, and he has accused the Trump administration of being “openly anti-European.”
A Legacy of Failure, and an Unstable Future.
France in 2026 is fundamentally an unstable country. The parliament continues to be unstable, with its fifth prime minister in two years, and the streets are filled with youths, many of them migrants or their children, burning down schools across the country, while far-left politicians like Jean-Luc Mélenchon appear to be attempting to fan the flames.
Migration also remains a major problem in France, with asylum seeker applications only dipping below 100,000 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Since 2023, the number of asylum applications has consistently been above 140,000 per year. A number of high-profile migration-background crimes have also occurred in France under Macron’s rule, including the murder of 12-year-old Lola Daviet in 2022, who was raped, tortured, and killed by an Algerian illegal alien.
Macron’s political legacy is one of failure on nearly every front, especially in his second term. New polls suggest that next year’s presidential election is unlikely to feature anyone linked to Macron in the second round, with Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon the favorites to face off. Instead of bringing France together, Macron has left it more divided and more unstable than it was prior to his presidency, and closer than ever to real civil conflict.
As Macron prepares to leave the Elysee Palace next year, the question many are asking is not whether he could have done better, but whether he could have done any worse. A looming potential war with Russia before then may very well answer that question.
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Image via World Economic Forum.
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