French economy minister Emmanuel Macron is to run as a candidate for the French presidency in elections to be held in 2017, and is likely to publicly announce his intention close to the date of June 10th, Mediapart has learnt from well-informed sources.
Mediapart understands that President François Hollande, who is widely tipped to make his own bid for a second term of office, is aware of Macron’s intentions.
Early last month Macron, 38, launched his own political movement, En Marche, which he described as “not on the Right, not on the Left”, raising speculation that he was planning to run in the elections in June next year.
Macron has come to symbolize the socialist government’s pro-business, liberal economic swing that began in earnest after the appointment of Manuel Valls as prime minister in March 2014, and is unpopular among the leftist current of the Socialist Party of which he was once briefly a member.
A graduate of the elite administration school ENA, he became a civil servant with the General Finance Inspectorate before joining the Banque Rothschild in 2008. After Hollande’s election in 2012, Macron became deputy chief-of-staff and advisor to the president, whose election campaign he had supported, before his appointment as economy minister in August 2014. He has no elected mandate.
It is unclear whether the economy minister’s move has the blessing of Hollande, who opinion polls have consistently shown to be profoundly unpopular across the party, including among his own camp, and whose as yet unannounced hope of standing for re-election are seriously compromised by France’s endemic unemployment which rose in March to 3.5 million people, or 10.3% of the active population.
Hollande has pledged he would not seek a second term as president unless the number of jobless began a significant downward trend. He also faces rival bids for the presidency from others on the deeply divided Left.
According to some sources, Hollande believes a bid by Macron would ultimately benefit his own, should he run. According to those sources, the two men have agreed that Macron would lead his campaign as he wished, championing policies of “neither Left nor Right” and would announce early next year, just months before the elections, that if he failed to survive the first round of voting in April he would lend his support to Hollande, if ever the latter reached the second round in May.
The two highest-scoring candidates in the first round vote on April 23rd 2017 will proceed to a play off in the final, second round two weeks later on May 7th.
However, amid Hollande’s increasing unpopularity among the left-wing electorate – which will be courted by a number of rival candidates – Macron’s bid may well be the final blow for Hollande by bleeding him of a small but vital percentage of the centrist and right-wing electorate.
Macron’s unofficial campaign has been building a public profile over the past six weeks. One week after the launch on April 6th of his movement En Marche, the official address of which Mediapart revealed was the private residence of the director of one of the French business world’s most influential ‘think tanks’, the Institut Montaigne, Macron appeared with his wife on the cover of weekly magazine Paris Match, under the headline “together on the road to power”.
Last Sunday he was the guest of honour at a crowded popular ceremony in Orleans to celebrate the town’s liberation from the English by Joan of Arc, on May 8th 1429. Macron was invited by the town’s conservative mayor, Olivier Carré, a member of Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Républicains party.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Mediapart has learnt from several concordant accounts that during private meetings with members of the business world, Macron has voiced criticism of Hollande and even declared that he would not again be part of his team. Whether Macron is playing a tactical game to better capture vital votes he can direct towards Hollande if the latter reaches the second round vote next year, or whether Macron is simply betraying him, even those among the economy minister’s entourage are uncertain. Some point to his lack of political sense which have seen out-of-line public gaffes, while others, including some who had contact with him during his time as partner with the Rothschild bank, believe he is capable of considerable duplicity.
Fundraising on the side in London
Meanwhile, his increasingly visible ambitions have placed Prime Minister Manuel Valls in the shadow. Macron has now become the darling of the business world which Valls, as of early in his premiership, courted with neoliberal policies. Tensions between the two men have notably heightened in recent weeks, illustrated by an incident in parliament earlier this week.
That was sparked by a question to the government by conservative Memeber of Parliament (MP) Georges Fenech on the subject of Macron’s visit to London on April 14th. Officially, Macron made the trip to lend his support to British Prime Minister David Cameron in his campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union and which will be decided by a referendum on June 23rd. However, rumours soon began circulating that Macron had taken advantage of his visit to hold a lunch with young French entrepreneurs to garner support and raise funds for his movement En Marche.
Macron’s entourage denied reports that the fund-raising had collected 12 million euros – which would have been unlikely given that donations to political parties are limited to 7,500 euros per person – although there was no denial of the fundraising itself.
Fenech asked for clarification of the reports that 12 million euros were collected and slammed what he called a “conflict of interest” and “abuse of ministerial functions” (see video below).
It was during Fenech’s question that the open dispute between Macron and Valls began. Macron told Valls that he wanted to reply to the question himself, but Valls refused, saying “I’ll do it, I’ll do it”. The prime minister got to his feet and, without mentioning Macron by name, insisted that there had been “no particular fundraising for I don’t know what association”. He then added, clearly more tempted to do battle with his economy minister rather than the opposition: “I would like government ministers to be fully engaged in their tasks.”
As soon as Valls sat down again he argues with Macron, while finance minister Michel Sapin and labour minister Myriam El Khomri, sitting between the two on the government benches, looking on uncomfortably (see video below).
According to online journal L’Opinion, which decrypted the conversation, Valls tackled Macron over an interview he gave to regional daily Sud-Ouest on Monday, in which he attacked the French “political caste” which he said he was not a part of.
“It is unacceptable, why do you say that?” asked Valls of Macron, according to L’Opinion.
“I agree with you. It was Juppé who I targeted,” replied Macron, referring to the former prime minister who is running to become the Républicains party presidential candidate.
“Well say it, say it!” answered Valls.
Questioned by Reuters news agency shortly after this article was published in its original French version, members of Macron’s entourage said the economy minister denied “all the information” it contained without adding further comment.
Meanwhile, also following publication of this report late Wednesday by Mediapart in French, broadcaster BFMTV published on its website a copy of an email sent out by a close ally of Macron’s which was an invitation to two fundraising events in the presence of the economy minister. “We have a very concrete need of funding,” it read. “To give you a broad idea, 18 million euros are needed to fund a presidential campaign in France.”
On Thursday, weekly magazine Le Point published on its website what it said were quotes from conversations during the fundraising meeting Macron held in London on April 14th. One of those invited is said to have asked Macron to clarify his ambitions and whether he intended “to go all the way” by making a bid for the presidency. “We would be happy to finance you, but it’s not to join the campaign for Hollande afterwards,” added the unnamed participant. Macron is quoted as replying: “If I launched En Marche it’s to go there, and to go there now.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse