Macron: Can he heal a divided France?
Emmanuel Macron has “achieved the impossible,” said Nicolas Beytout in L’Opinion (France). By winning re-election over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, the French president became the first to win two consecutive terms since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Now an empowered Macron can govern “freed from the constraint of electoral deadlines.” In his first term, France’s youngest-ever president quickly “expelled the feudal lords” of French politics by gathering moderate voters beneath his center-right big-tent party, which kept Le Pen and the far right firmly in check. His victory will brighten a “gloomy year” for Europe, said Andreas Ross in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). His steady leadership has united the Continent during Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and Europe will need that leadership as it strengthens its continental defense and prepares to wean itself off Russian energy for good. In facing down the far-right nationalists at home, Macron did not appease them by leaning toward Euroskepticism. Instead, he doubled down on his core belief that “Europe is the solution” and showed Germany and other EU nations that we have “a partner with guts.”
This is no time for Macron to celebrate, said Jérôme Fenoglio in Le Monde (France). His victory “confronts him directly with his failure” to connect with a frustrated French working class. He won this time by firmly refuting the “xenophobic program” of Le Pen, but she still pulled in a troubling 41.5 percent of the vote, easily “the best score for the far right in an election.” And a record 16.7 million people did not vote at all. Now, with both
Le Pen and the far-left party of thirdplace candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon eager to deny Macron a parliamentary majority in the June elections, Macron must be mindful of “the abyss into which his country was ready to fall,” said Beatrice Delvaux in Le Soir (Belgium). Even in defeat, the French far right and its anti-immigrant, nationalist message demonstrated “its growing and potentially limitless power of attraction,” and its leader— be it Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, or someone else—will continue to exploit the fractures in French society. Macron spent his first term at loggerheads with populists over unpopular proposals such as raising the retirement age. He “cannot leave this wound open.”
France’s “new fault lines” have been laid bare, said Stefan Brändle in Der Standard (Austria), and they no longer run “between left and right.” Instead, it’s Macron’s liberal, pro-business, proEuropean camp on one hand and populists on the other; the “moderate center against the radical fringes of the French political spectrum.” Macron won votes in cities and high-income areas, while the working class supported Le Pen and Mélenchon. And while Macron successfully painted Le Pen as being in Vladimir Putin’s pocket, the president often appeared more focused on the war in Ukraine than on the needs of the French people. Voters still see Macron’s “elitist, arrogant attitude” as reminiscent of “the aloofness of French kings.” Will Macron ever pay attention to “the cold blast furnaces of Lorraine” and “the closed coal mines of northern France?” If not, his second term “is unlikely to be any smoother than the first.”