For more than six years, President Emmanuel Macron has struggled to convince the French that he is a man of dialogue. He went on a nationwide listening tour to calm the storms of the Yellow Vests uprising, convened a citizens’ convention on climate policy and established a council of politicians and civil society members to discuss France’s most pressing issues.
But he has generally remained a top-down leader, one who listens before making up his mind, but rarely speaks of compromise. An image of detachment has stuck with him, despite attempts to bury it.
Now that he is more isolated, he is trying to achieve political outreach.
In the midst of the torrid doldrums of mid-August, when the ritual of protest was temporarily replaced by the ritual of the beach, France awoke to news that Macron would convene key parliamentary factions on Wednesday for an afternoon of discussions. by dinner.
It seemed like a pre-emptive strike aimed at averting a potentially turbulent ‘rentrée’ – the post-holiday convergence in Paris often marked by resentment rekindling after a period of downtime.
The official goal is to explore a viable legislative agenda in a parliament where Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, and its allies lack an absolute majority. But the president’s position is delicate. With four years left in his second and final term, the last thing he wants is to be seen as a lame duck. Yet inevitably soon the battle to succeed him will begin; in some ways it already is.
While the protests over raising the retirement age to 64 have eased early this year, the bitterness around them has not. The way the government, taking advantage of a constitutional provision, rammed this major reform through the lower house of parliament without a vote has fueled anger at the extent of presidential power. As a result, Macron’s attempts to say “I hear you” to a legislature he does not control tend to come to naught.
“Macron won, he imposed his reforms, but at the cost of a tension in the country that is quite extraordinary and an extremely strong polarization around his person,” said Vincent Martigny, professor of political science at the University of Nice. He added that opposition parties were generally not interested in compromise and had little incentive to help the president succeed.
In a scathing reaction to Macron’s move, the left-wing alliance in parliament, which combines the left-wing France Unbowed Party with the Socialists, Communists and Greens, declined the dinner invitation.
“We are under no illusions about your objectives,” they said in a statement. “We’ve gotten used to your PR stunts that have no follow-up and no effect.”
The parties said they would show up for the afternoon session in the hope that what they described as urgent concerns – including a 10 percent increase in electricity prices this month and rising gasoline and food prices – could be addressed.
Conservative Republicans, who are closer to Macron’s center-right policies, even if not fully aligned with them, seemed more interested in imposing Macron’s hand — especially on immigration policy — than in closing of compromises with him.
“I’m going there to tell Mr. Macron that the talk has gone on too long, to say that we will not play first fiddle to the symphony of immobility,” Eric Ciotti, the head of the Republican Party, told one party. meeting in the South of France last week.
Stéphane Séjourné, the leader of Macron’s Renaissance party, said the fact that all parties agreed to attend was a victory in itself. “Three months ago that would not have happened,” he said. “Our culture is of opposition, not coalition.”
In an extensive interview with Le Point magazine last week, Macron appeared defiant rather than conciliatory. He criticized his opposition for being hopelessly divided and noted that his government had passed a number of laws, bill by bill, in makeshift coalitions over the past year.
These include increasing military spending, a law to accelerate the construction of new nuclear power plants, and another to cut red tape and accelerate the development of green energy across France.
“Let those who claim we have done nothing explain to me when they have done more,” Macron told Le Point.
The resentment fueled by Macron’s personality – he became president at age 39 in his first campaign for political office – is such that his real achievements in reducing unemployment, boosting foreign investment , developing a French technology sector and dealing with the wounds of the French colonial past and raising the ambitions of the European Union often go unnoticed.
Somehow it seems that if he is to give direction to his second term in office, he must overcome this perception of his presidency, which has been distorted by personal animosity towards him.
“He failed to convince public opinion that he was a man of dialogue, especially after the disastrous series of pension reforms,” Mr Martigny said.
Macron’s immigration reform plans could further escalate tensions. They aim to strike a balance between cracking down on illegal immigration and expanding employment opportunities for migrants with the necessary skills.
The government wants to speed up the deportation process and impose stricter language requirements on migrants applying for a residence permit, who should also promise to respect the ‘principles of the Republic’. But it also wants to create temporary jobs for skilled workers in sectors where there is a labor shortage.
“I would say we should now be mean to those who are mean and be nice to those who are nice,” Gérald Darmanin, Macron’s interior minister, told Le Monde last year. Among ministers, Mr Darmanin seems most impatient as he hints at his presidential ambitions for 2027.
But the government’s efforts have done little to attract support from the left, which has called it too harsh, or the right, which says it is doing too little to stem the flow of migrants. That opposition, on top of the social unrest caused by Macron’s pension reform, led the government to repeatedly delay the proposals. A bill is now expected to be examined sometime in the fall.
Mr Macron could ram it through the lower house of parliament with the same provision – known as the 49.3 after the relevant article of the constitution – that he used for the pension reform. But it can only be used once per parliamentary session, with the exception of budget bills. It would entail significant political costs.
“Constitutionally it’s not a problem, but politically it is,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at Sciences Po in Paris. “The democratically elected parliament of one of Europe’s largest countries cannot pass the most crucial bills over several years through a procedure that hampers parliamentary debate.”
Mr Macron has also floated the idea of using popular referendums to circumvent the political stalemate. But he can only organize referenda on a limited number of issues, and they can turn against him.
“We are living in a difficult and unusual moment,” Transport Minister Clément Beaune said in an interview. “We come from a long and vigorous social protest movement and are faced with a parliament with no clear majority for the entire mandate.”
