French President Emmanuel Macron’s term won’t end until 2027, but his ability to lead the country’s politics has recently been called into question. The reason is the controversial immigration reform, the adoption of which forced the president to make painful concessions to the right-wing opposition.
Emmanuel Macron was re-elected French president last year, but centrist parties supporting Macron lost their majority in parliament in parliamentary elections held just a month after the presidential election.
Although some allies have suggested that Macron form a coalition with right-wing republicans, with whom he would have a majority in parliament, the president has refused to do so.
The following months showed that governing without a parliamentary majority proved more difficult than expected. In April this year, Macron managed to pass a reform raising the retirement age only by using Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which allows the government to pass bills without parliamentary approval.
Yet such a move gives the opposition the legal right to call for a vote of no confidence in the government. In total, the Macron government used this option 22 times.
Macron’s prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, only narrowly survived the no-confidence votes that followed, and some observers say some MPs may have abstained from the no-confidence vote only out of fear of an early election.
Macron has tried to govern by combining right-wing and left-wing ideas. He called this practice “en meme temps”. However, such an approach could not overcome divisions in French society or ensure the passage of important bills for Macron.
A particularly serious setback for the president occurred in late December, when parliament initially voted narrowly against Macron’s immigration reform, which at the same time planned to make it easier to deport illegal immigrants and to ease restrictions on issuing work permits to immigrants in jobless professions.
After the defeat, Macron had to agree with the Republicans on a significant tightening of the law. The amended bill passed parliament with the support of right-wing populist opposition Marine Le Pen, while nearly a quarter of Macron’s MPs voted against the bill or abstained. However, the government’s health minister resigned in protest at the revised bill.
Now there are rumors circulating in Paris that Macron could replace the prime minister himself. At the same time, Le Pen talks about the ideological victory of his own party.
“He destroyed what was left of ‘en meme temps’ and completed the shift to the right. It may have been the only way to preserve his remaining mandate, but at what cost?” Mathieu Gallard, an analyst at the research firm Ipsos, commented on the political drama for the Financial Times.
During the election campaign, Macron promised to reform France, fight chronically high unemployment and attract investors to the country. Yet his ability to lead the country is now in question, even though he still has more than three years left in his mandate.
At the same time, support has grown for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party, which already leads Macron’s party with 12% in the latest polls. Support for Macron, however, has fallen to near its lowest level yet.
As a result, many French political experts now fear that Macron’s presidency could be followed by that of Le Pen.
“You know very well if [Le Pen] follow him, everyone will condemn him, saying that Macron did nothing and did not help Le Pen come to power,” said François Patriat, a member of the French Senate close to the president.
2023-12-27 11:19:00
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