After a glowing political honeymoon on the international stage, President Emmanuel Macron was on Wednesday engulfed in his first crisis since his election in May after the chief-of-staff of France’s armed forces, General Pierre de Villiers, resigned amid a row between the two men over defence budget cuts. But while there is widespread outrage from the Left and Right at Macron’s humiliating treatment of de Villiers, who he rebuked in public over opposition to the cuts for a military the general says is at “breaking point”, the controversy has widened to the new president’s apparent contempt for parliament’s right to information. Lénaïg Bredoux reports.
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The resignation of the General Pierre de Villiers as chief-of-staff of France’s armed forces represents the first major political crisis of Emmanuel Macron’s two-month-old presidency.
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