Social Europe: The Euro-elections in microcosm: Macron versus Le Pen

Macron himself made of his campaign an existential struggle between his La République en Marche (LREM) party and Marine Le Pen’s nationalist and Eurosceptic Rassemblement National (RN).

Towards the end of the campaign, he raised the stakes by personally getting engaged and emphasising how important this election was for him. In an interview with regional media, Macron said: ‘The transformation project I am leading for the country does not go ahead without a new stage in the European project. The French people elected me for that.’ For him, these European elections could be summed up in one question: ‘Do we want division when facing the United States and China, or do we prefer unity to build our European future?’ [...]

European elections are very often used to protest against parties in government and it is not a surprise when these come in second or third in European polls. Considering the gilets jaunes movement, the weekly protests and the drop in Macron’s ratings in recent months, LREM is probably glad that it maintained this level of support. In fact, the Élysée has already suggested that it does not intend to backtrack on its policies and that it will enter the ‘second act’ of Macron’s term with the same determination.

Third place went to the Greens’ list, with 13.5 per cent. Domestically, the results show a consolidation of the changes to the French political landscape that emerged in 2017. The system now focuses on LREM and RN, rather than the centre-right Republicans and centre-left Socialists—they ended in fourth and sixth place respectively.

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openDemocracy: The Return of la Marine

The turn in fortunes is also reflected in Marine Le Pen's improved public image. Not only has she reappeared on the cover of major French news magazines; pollsters are also again taking her seriously enough as a major political contender to measure her support as well as her appeal, particularly compared to the current president of the republic. The results show that the president of the RN has managed to restore much of her credibility, even if a large majority of the electorate continues to view her negatively. In the most recent survey, a large majority of respondents credited her with being dynamic and courageous, but also arrogant and authoritarian – albeit less so than Emmanuel Macron, who has come to epitomize smugness.

Marine Le Pen owes her rebound in the polls to a significant extent to the revolt of the gilets jaunes, the grassroots protest that started in late 2018 against the rise in the tax on gas and diesel, promoted as a step towards advancing the government's green agenda. The tax hike provoked widespread rage in the rural countryside, directed particularly against Paris where it occasioned acts of violent rioting. The eruption of rage particularly benefited Marine Le Pen – and for good reason. An opinion poll on the reasons for the growing tensions in French society from early this year identified the growing "social difficulties" of parts of the population as well as "the sense that the Parisian elites (political, economic, and in the media) are disconnected from the everyday reality experienced by the French" as the main drivers of popular disaffection, aggressiveness and rage. The sense of disconnect found its most memorable expression in a slogan, attributed to the gilets jaunes: Ils évoquent la fin du monde, nous on parle de la fin du mois [They evoke the end of the world, we talk about the end of the month]. [...]

Last but not least, Marine le Pen has shown remarkable programmatic flexibility on essential issues. For the presidential election of 2017, the FN candidate made the exit from the euro one of the core issues of her presidential campaign. It turned out to be an enormous flop. Following the disaster of 2017, it was quietly dropped, even if Marine Le Pen insisted that regaining "monetary sovereignty" was still on the agenda – albeit for some time in the future. Undoubtedly, Marine Le Pen took note of the fact that a large majority of French voters are opposed to giving up the euro. Under the circumstances, pragmatism trumps ideology, even on the radical populist right. [...]

At the same time, however, the same percentage also agreed that "the unemployed could find work if they only wanted" – a position shared with the right. In other words, RN supporters are overwhelmingly in favor of some measure of social justice, as long as it tied to a notion of "deservedness" associated with productive work. Migrants and refugees clearly don't count among the deserving. For too long the both Marine Le Pen and her father have charged that the vast majority of immigrants come to France primarily to take advantage of France's generous social services; and for too long both have demanded to shut down the pompes aspirantes de l'Etat-Providence (suction pumps of the welfare state) and limit benefits to the native born (FN's policy of préférence nationale).

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Politico: Call Emmanuel Macron any name you like — but not ‘liberal’

Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) is in many respects a liberal party. It is engaged in a coy flirtation with the liberal group in the European Parliament ahead of the election in May — but it refuses to fully jump into bed with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). [...]

Officials in the LREM say the reasons are more nuancées. As a “party of government” with an overwhelming majority of seats in the National Assembly, Macron’s 3-year-old party is reluctant to commit itself to a group that uneasily unites smallish parties from 21 countries. [...]

The popular meaning of the word “liberal” has long been variable. In the United States it means “leftie." In Britain it means “centrist.” In Europe it means secular right-wing — pro-market and pro-individual liberties, anti-state and anti-church.

In France, however, the word has taken on the darker meaning of “heartless capitalist.” Liberalism is a force in French politics but it no longer dares to answer to its name. [...]

Tocqueville, though a great liberal thinker, was more concerned with political and personal freedoms than economic freedom and the power of the market. He warned against the market-driven, despotic power of the “manufacturing aristocracy,” which he saw developing in Britain and the U.S. The “French Adam Smith,” Frédéric Bastiat, was admired in theory but ignored in practice.

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Jacobin Magazine: Macron’s Anniversary

It might seem odd for a democratic leader to refer to “people who are nothing,” but from the beginning of his presidency Macron has embraced this arrogant posture. His muscular liberalism adopts a tough “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” line. In similar recent provocations he has called public-sector workers “slackers” and told students missing their studies for protests that they could not expect easy “chocolate-coated exams.”[...]

Twenty-five universities have been occupied in protest at the reforms, fearing the eventual creation of an American or British-style system in which the student-consumer takes out a massive debt as an “investment” in their education and future career. The occupiers fear that students will become a bit like a start-upper at Station F, not the recipient of a public service but a private entrepreneur selling themselves as a product. [...]

6.6 million French citizens are either unemployed or chronically underemployed. This figure has fallen slightly since 2017 but remains above pre-crisis levels. Alienation from the old parties has hardly won such voters to Macron, whose agenda entrenches the very processes that caused the disaster of ex-industrial France. Nor do Macron’s plans for European reform seem likely to survive contact with German opposition. [...]

The Front National remains beyond the pale for large swathes of the population. This toxic, xenophobic force was Macron’s ideal opposition as he sought to rally the Left to his “open,” neoliberal project. However, an IPSOS study after last May’s election found that just 16 percent of his vote owed to agreement to his program, 33 percent to “political renewal” and 43 percent to opposition to Le Pen.

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Reuters: French leader Macron's power system: never explain, never apologize

A year after his election, things have not turned out that way, and a small but growing number of rank-and-file supporters has voiced frustration at a leadership style that is, by Macron's own admission, not always inclusive.   [...]

Many grass root supporters, who set up thousands of "En Marche" committees across France during Macron's campaign, gave up when they realized their ideas did not filter through to Paris, she said.

While there is no sign of Macron changing tack, his popularity ratings have slipped to their lowest point since he took office, with only 40 percent of the population having a favorable opinion of him, according to a recent poll. [...]

In just a year, Macron has made hiring and firing easier, slashed a wealth tax, launched an overhaul of the education system, unveiled plans to cut the number of lawmakers and confronted unions with a reform of the debt-laden railways.

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Spiegel: Macron Eyes Expanding His Movement Across Europe

Plenty is still in flux, but it seems clear that Macron doesn't plan to simply join one of the existing groups in the European Parliament. Guy Verhofstadt, head of the parliamentary group Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the primary proponents of economic liberalism in Brussels, is in frequent contact with Macron via text message, but he still hasn't been invited to Élysée Palace. The Socialists are in the process of shrinking into meaninglessness across Europe. And the EPP, the European Parliamentary group to which Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) belong, in addition to the parties of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, doesn't seem to Macron like the right political ally either. [...]

Indeed, there are nascent efforts across Europe to establish movements similar to En Marche! - everywhere, that is, but in Germany, where Anglade is exercising caution. For one, the German party system is still seen as being relatively stable despite the rise of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany. For another, Macron is wary of antagonizing Merkel's conservatives or the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) since he needs the chancellor and incoming Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (of the SPD) to implement at least some of the EU reforms he has proposed. [...]

Macron has already suffered initial defeats at the hands of the European establishment. In February, a clear majority in the European Parliament voted against Macron's proposal to replace British MEPs post-Brexit with candidates elected on the basis of transnational lists, one of the French president's most important ideas for injecting more democracy into the European project. The EU summit at the end of February likewise rejected the idea.

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The Atlantic: Macron’s War on 'Fake News'

In a Wednesday address to journalists at the Élysée Palace, the French president announced his plan to introduce legislation that would curb the spread of misinformation during the country’s future election campaigns—a lofty goal he said would be made possible by enforcing more media transparency and blocking offending sites. “Thousands of propaganda accounts on social networks are spreading all over the world, in all languages, lies invented to tarnish political officials, personalities, public figures, journalists,” Macron said, adding that “if we want to protect liberal democracies, we must have strong legislation.”

Though the exact details of the proposed bill are not yet known, Macron said the law—which would apply only during campaigns—would boost transparency online by mandating that social media platforms must reveal who is paying for sponsored content, as well as impose a cap on how much can be spent. He said judges would be empowered to take down false content and even block access to websites where such content appears. The country’s media watchdog, the CSA, would be given additional powers to “fight any destabilization attempt by television channels controlled or influenced by foreign states.” [...]

France, like the United States and others, has laws that protect freedom of speech. In fact, Article 11 of the country’s Declaration of Human and Civic Rights guarantees that all citizens “may speak, write, print freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by Law.” Still, some critics fear the proposed law could represent a violation. Bruno Retailleau, a senior conservative senator, warned that “in a democracy, misinformation is better than state information,” adding that “only authoritarian regimes claim to control the truth.” Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front and Macron’s former presidential election opponent, called the proposal “very disturbing,” adding: “Who will decide if the information is false?”

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The Atlantic: The Education of Emmanuel Macron

While the initial enthusiasm that drove Macron to victory—and that encouraged me to work as a U.S. representative for his campaign—has faded, there’s little to justify the widespread anger against him. Something deeper is at work. As a Frenchman living in Washington witnessing the rise of Donald Trump first hand, I came to see that, at heart, Macron’s fall reveals the profound challenges that moderate liberals face in a polarized political climate. As he pursues his reforms, he is also trying to reshape French politics, bringing together a coalition of reformists from both sides of the political aisle, elected with center-left votes but governing with a mostly center-right cabinet. But he will have trouble building a lasting base if he is seen only as a moderate technocrat—a fate he escaped during the campaign. His success or failure to hold the center in the face of populists may well shape the fate of liberals across Europe.

Macron’s political gamble succeeded, in part, because of the unpopularity of his chief opponents, the scandal-marred Francois Fillon of the right-wing Republicans party and the divisive Marine Le Pen of the National Front. More importantly, beyond his policy platform, he captured much of the anti-establishment anger sweeping France (and indeed, the world). In January, a vast majority of French voters felt their political leaders were “corrupt”; 49 percent wanted a “strongman that wouldn’t have to worry about parliament or elections.” He pledged to run against the failures of both traditional parties, and was well-positioned to do so: At the age of 39, he had never run for office, and built a party from scratch. Only five percent of the candidates he endorsed were incumbents—most had never run for office.

But Macron is no failure. In addition to getting new candidates elected, he and his allies in parliament successfully passed a bill that sought to make France’s politics more transparent, and roll back the conflicts of interest that have poisoned the country’s institutions for decades, by imposing stricter controls on parliamentary spending. Furthermore, the inexperienced president’s first steps in the international arena, especially his handling of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, were largely hailed as successes. Now with his labor-market reforms, Macron continues to execute on his campaign promises.  [...]

But it’s unclear whether voters will follow him down this path. After all, he captured only 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, and benefited from the collapse of the Socialist party after Hollande’s unsuccessful term. As the Socialist share in parliament fell from 295 to 31 seats, orphaned center-left voters turned to him. And yet, Macron’s cabinet tilts to the right, with a prime minister, economics minister, and budget minister, poached from the right-wing Republicans party. His first economic measures, from tax cuts to reduction in housing subsidies and labor market reforms, are drawn from the center-right. Macron may see all this as a way of building a new liberal pole that unites center-left and center-right. But disgruntled voters might see his triangulation as a betrayal. 

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Political Critique: Emmanuel Macron, the golden child?

Yet one would be mistaken in thinking that Macron is politically inexperienced, or that he is the product of anything other than an elite French political establishment. A four year membership of the Socialist Party and equal time spent as Inspector of Finances in the French Ministry of Economy, accompanies job titles that include private banker for Rothschild & Cie, deputy secretary-general of the Élysée and Minister of Economy and Finance. His party may be a newcomer on the French political scene but Macron, clearly, is not. Add to this an Ivy League-equivalent education, with graduate degrees from the two most prestigious academic institutions in France, and you have a candidate that is plainly the product of an elite political class that his party claims to eschew. [...]

Yet scratch a little deeper and there is cause for concern. Macron’s career has been mired by close and problematic links to big business, links that show no signs of dissolving. While he talks humanism, his decision to integrate many of the State of Emergency measures into common law has alarmed civil rights groups. Under such laws, the state would have the ability to conduct warrant-less property searches and house arrests, as well as banning protest marches, shutting down places of worship suspected of extremist teaching, and increased electronic surveillance.

Similarly, the seemingly liberal stance of the new administration towards immigration masks a paradoxical dichotomy between what appears to be a desire for a more open, welcoming EU, yet with stricter border control, particularly in France. While Macron spoke of the need for France to accept its just part in the welcoming of refugees to Europe throughout his election campaign, conversely, he has taken a tough stance on irregular immigration. While it remains to be seen how such distinctions will play out, the mass expulsion of approximately 2,700 people from a migrant camp in La Chapelle, Paris on 7 July does not seem like a particularly auspicious start.

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Politico: Can Macron avoid the Sarkozy trap?

It is not clear that Macron appreciates the urgency. The government’s labor code reform, for instance, was adopted by the National Assembly on July 13 and awaits a vote in the Senate. Its primary purpose is to change the rigid rules around collective bargaining, bringing in more flexibility.

It should impose a ceiling on redundancy payments and make it easier for multinational companies to terminate employment on economic grounds. Currently, the law requires evidence of poor economic performance, not just from the French branch of a multinational firm but also from its branches in other countries.

But there is a catch. Even if approved by the Senate and signed into law, the new legislation does not actually do any of those things. It merely gives the government the authority to change the relevant areas of the labor code by executive orders, which are to be presented to “social partners” by the end of August. Superficially, the legislation appears to give the executive a strong mandate to proceed with labor market reforms by fiat. However, it also signals that the depth of those reforms is still negotiable. [...]

Such a slow pace is risky. France’s loudest anti-reform trade union, General Confederation of Labour, is already preparing for a day of mobilization on September 12 over the labor market reforms. Given the sluggish schedule, even politicians within Macron’s own party, La République En Marche, are bound to come under pressure to water the reforms down or derail them altogether.

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Jacobin Magazine: France Is Transformed

The second round marked a moderation of the results of the first round. Many surveys recorded that a majority of those interviewed did not want the newly elected president to be able to rely on a compliant majority in the future National Assembly. The En Marche! tactic that might have proven devastating — seeking to mobilize right-wing voters to wipe out the Left, and then to mobilize the Left to wipe out the Right — was in fact only a moderate success. [...]

When almost 60 percent of eligible voters abstain from casting their ballot — that is to say, when they are given the opportunity to vote in what is meant to be a decisive contest — this means that politics is in crisis and that democracy is ill. All the indices — structural abstention, the discredit that the parties have fallen into, distrust of elected officials — indicate that we have reached the point where in most people’s minds the political institutions have lost their meaning. [...]

If we do not free ourselves of this crisis, the very basis of any democracy will be under threat. Discontent and anxiety will not lead to concerted collective action, but to resentment, bitterness, and hatred. Combativeness will give way to the stigmatization of scapegoats, to flare-ups of violence followed by resignation. There is nothing to be won for emancipation in this game, where in the last instance it is always the dominant who will remain the strongest. [...]

By virtue of its majoritarian principles, the Fifth Republic reinvigorated the binary of left and right. But the centrist temptation persisted, insofar as both the Right and Left in power gave an appearance of fragility. In the mid-1960s the rise in opposition to Gaullism revived political centrism as a possible alternative to historical Gaullism. At that time, it took the “American form” of Jean Lecanuet’s Democratic Center and then the Union for French Democracy (UDF) under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, which sought to replace Gaullism by setting itself the ambition of rallying “two in three French people.”

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The Atlantic: Macron's Majority

French President Emmanuel Macron’s decisive win in the second round of the country’s legislative election Sunday was no surprise, with polls projecting strong showings for both Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) party and its small centrist ally, Democratic Movement (MoDem), which collectively took 350 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats.

While the results mark a transformation of France’s political landscape from one controlled by two establishment parties to one controlled by a year-old political movement, it also marks a renewal of the very faces that make up the country’s lower, but more powerful, house of parliament. Of the 354 incumbents who sought re-election, 148 retained their seats—giving way to 429 new deputies, making up 75 percent of the incoming legislature. Historically, turnover rates average closer to between 120 to 270 seats. [...]

Indeed, Macron pledged this “renewal of faces” in the months leading up to his presidential win last month, vowing to field a diverse slate of parliamentary candidates, half of whom were women and more than half of whom never previously held political office. The pledge paid off: The average age of deputies dropped from 53 to 48, with the number of deputies under the age of 30 jumping from four to 29. The number of women now stands at 38.65 percent, up from 27 percent—a change that prompted France to surge from 64th to 17th place in the world’s rankings of female parliamentary representation and sixth place in Europe, besting both Britain and Germany.  

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Slate: Macron Wins Landslide Victory in French Legislative Elections, Ends French Party Politics as We Know It

According to projections from Sunday night, candidates from the centrist’s En Marche party took a huge advantage in Sunday’s first-round elections despite relatively low turnout. Ipsos says that after the second-round runoff elections—which are held next Sunday—En Marche should ultimately take between 390 and 430 seats in the 577-member house, which would give the party the largest National Assembly majority in the history of the Fifth Republic.

For the first time in 50 years, more than half of French voters abstained. Between the low turnout and the strong performance of Macron’s party—whose candidates took about a third of the vote—only three candidates hit the threshold to be elected after the first round. (In 2007, more than 100 candidates hit that bar.) The low turnout also puts a small dent in Macron’s enormous mandate, as his presidential rival Marine Le Pen noted on Sunday. [...]

All that sort of underplays the extent of Macron’s success. His party is only 14 months old, so it held no seats in the National Assembly, whose members serve five-year terms. Experts weren’t even sure he could field enough candidates, let alone win a majority. Instead, his slate—half women, and with a significant number of minority candidates—is in pole position for the runoff next weekend.

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Quartz: Macron is draining the swamp in France—or trying to

Sex and money are hot topics for which my two countries exhibit inverted cultural hangups. Here in the US, we freely discuss our money, but experience a countrywide conniption when a singer shows a tiny bit of nipple. In Paris, we happily discuss carnal mischief but would never think of asking someone how much they paid for their apartment—it’s tantamount to grabbing someone’s pudendum. The French demonize money just like we Americans demonize sex. Money is a very private affair. [...]

During France’s recent presidential election campaign, we were treated to revelations of corruption that led to the indictments of two candidates and a few close associates. Angry shouts of “tous pourris” (they’re all rotten!) were heard at both ends of the political spectrum, from the extreme leftist Jean- Luc Mélenchon and the no-less-extreme Marine Le Pen on the right (who herself was embroiled in the kind of financial shenanigans she accused the “rotten” political class of condoning). [...]

Next up: There’s a parliamentary election mid-June, with 577 seats in play. If Macron is to implement the reforms he articulated during his presidential campaign, he needs an indisputable legislative majority at the Assemblée Nationale, colloquially referred to as a majorité de gouvernement (governing majority). These reforms—modernizing France’s paleo-marxist labor code, cleaning up unemployment compensation, making retirement regulations and payments more equitable for present and future generations—will arouse opposition from a wide range of stakeholders, and Macron’s parliamentary support will inevitably suffer defections as afflicted voters put pressure on their representatives.

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Vox: 6 things to watch as Macron takes office in France

Macron, who formed a new political party called En Marche in 2016, has promised to strengthen France’s ties to Europe, simplify the tax system, overhaul the labor market, and scale back needless regulations. But without a clear governing coalition, he will face a number of obstacles. If he’s unable to lift France out of its economic malaise, all those festering anxieties will come bubbling up five years from now when the next presidential election is held. [...]

We don't know what will happen or what the mode of failure will be if Macron fails. Who knows, it could empower the far left. Mélenchon [the far-left candidate who quit the Socialist Party in 2008] did better than expected in the first round, so people might turn in that direction. If you were to ask me today, I would say that's the most probable direction in which things would turn if Macron became as unpopular as Hollande.

It's still a deeply divided country, and Macron's vote is by no means an endorsement of Macron's program. Estimates are that as many as 40 or 45 percent of the people who voted for him voted to block Le Pen and not for Macron positively. And he's probably going to alienate quite a number of those people because he said that his first move will be to reform the labor code, which even the mild reforms attempted under Hollande elicited quite a strong reaction and there were demonstrations in the streets, lots of union protests. So the divisiveness is going to come to the fore immediately, and we'll see how he responds to that.

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Politico: French parties’ Macron dilemma: Beat him or join him?

Both the Socialists and the conservative Républicains can’t hide their deep divisions over what to do after their own electoral defeats: Should they join the 39-year-old president-elect — or fight him? [...]

That runs contrary to the official line of the Républicains, who have found a new temporary leader in François Baroin, the mayor of Troyes and briefly an economy minister under Sarkozy. Baroin has been tasked with leading the party’s parliamentary campaign and he is trying to keep it from falling apart. His aim is to secure an absolute majority of seats for the Républicains, force Macron to choose a conservative prime minister — a role Baroin would like for himself — and then try to set their own legislative agenda. [...]

Things aren’t any clearer in the Socialist camp, where the same dilemma is tearing the party apart. Some government members such as junior foreign minister Jean-Marie Le Guen are eager to join Macron — following the example of Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, one of the new president’s early supporters. And former PM Manuel Valls has called for the party to be squarely in the “presidential majority.” [...]

What will make it harder for conservative bigwigs to decide is that Macron isn’t expected to announce his choice for prime minister until Sunday at the earliest — once he takes over as president. Some Républicains want to make sure that Macron is serious about his intention to govern with people of all stripes. They would be reassured by him choosing a PM from the center-right, as Macron himself hails from the Socialist camp.

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The Washington Post: France’s critical election happens in June, not on Sunday

France’s president appoints the premier, but once in office, the premier can be removed only by the assembly. This means the premier answers to the parliament, not the president. And the French constitution gives the premier, not the president, greater lawmaking powers. The president, for example, has no veto power, so the assembly can pass legislation by a bare majority even over the president’s objections. 

The French premier also has some tools that have no real parallel in pure presidential systems with their separation of powers. Article 49 of the French constitution allows the premier to propose legislation under a special rule — if the assembly takes no action, the proposal becomes law, but a negative vote from the assembly brings down the government. The maneuver is known as the guillotine. [...]

During cohabitation periods, the presidency diminished in stature, and the premier tended to exercise the main executive policymaking authority. For example, in the late 1980s, Chirac as premier engineered a major tax cut and privatized state-owned enterprises while the Socialist Mitterand could only watch.

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