What do former supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy, the left-wing nationalist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, and the right-wing ex-minister Éric Woerth have in common? They are all supporting current president Emmanuel Macron in his bid for re-election. Backing for the incumbent from such disparate groups is a clear sign of how the old forces of government in France – the traditional Right and Left - have run out of steam. It also highlights the extent to which social democrats have effectively abandoned the political field. With the first round of the presidential election taking place on Sunday April 10th, Fabien Escalona looks at how Macron's 'big tent' politics has got even bigger, and examines some of the resulting dangers for French politics.
When Emmanuel Macron recently set out his manifesto for next month's presidential election he adopted both the language and the policies of the mainstream Right. As a result the official right-wing candidate, Valérie Pécresse from the Les Républicains party, has seen her own position on the political spectrum squeezed. Her supporters are now wondering how to counter Macron's occupation of the Right's political terrain – and, indeed, whether it can be countered at all. Ilyes Ramdani reports.
Since the start of Russia's war in Ukraine the presidential candidate for the radical left La France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears to have changed his tone in relation to the regime in Moscow. He issued a statement condemning the invasion in unequivocal terms. But current events have led to detailed scrutiny of his past and sometimes controversial stances on international relations. In particular, a desire to be “non-aligned” in global political terms has led to claims that Mélenchon – the clear front-runner on the Left in opinion polls - has shown relative lenience towards Vladimir Putin's regime. Pauline Graulle reports.
The French presidential election is about to get underway in earnest with President Emmanuel Macron finally set to announce his candidature ahead of the elections in April. According to opinion polls his two main rivals are both from the far-right: the Rassemblement National president Marine Le Pen and maverick polemicist Éric Zemmour. Yet both are set to be embarrassed by the far-right's long-held support of Vladimir Putin at a time when Russia has just sparked outrage around the world by invading Ukraine. As historian Nicolas Lebourg reports, the two candidates will find it hard to reconcile the far-right's general support for Putin's regime and the risk of being seen as traitors to French national interests.
For a long time the French president placed great emphasis on his “privileged relationship” with his Russian counterpart to obtain diplomatic advances, sometimes without even consulting his European partners. But when Emmanuel Macron met Vladimir Putin in Moscow in early February to discuss the situation in Ukraine everything had changed ... starting with the Kremlin chief himself. Ellen Salvi reports.
As the French presidential elections approach, Mediapart’s economics correspondent Martine Orange examines Emmanuel Macron’s track record in industrial strategy which, she argues, has become his Achilles heel. His involvement in policy making in the domain is not limited to his five years as president, but in fact began ten years ago in the wings of the Élysée Palace, since when France has lost more than one million jobs in the industrial sector, whose contribution to the country’s GDP fell in parallel from around 20 percent to around 10 percent.
On Monday January 31st the military-civilian junta running Mali told France's ambassador to leave the country in a further escalation of the tension that has developed between the two nations in recent months. As Rémi Carayol observes, the next stage in the bitter war of words could be an announcement from Paris that France's military forces in the African country will be withdrawn.
Unable to unite around a single candidate for France’s presidential elections in April, France’s profoundly divided broad Left faces a trouncing at the polls. Its stand-alone candidates were joined at the weekend by Christiane Taubira, an icon for some among the socialist movement, whose bid threatens to further splinter the leftwing vote. Fabien Escalona and Mathilde Goanec report.
On Friday evening Emmanuel Macron delivered the final New Year's presidential broadcast to the nation of his five-year term of office. Ahead of April's presidential elections – for which Macron has yet to officially declare himself as a candidate – the incumbent gave a rapid overview of what he sees as his achievements in office. Despite the Covid pandemic, President Macron sought to describe a political landscape that embraced both “optimism” and “tolerance” - an assessment, says Ellen Salvi, that stands in stark contrast to the reality of his presidency. Political opponents immediately accused the president of being “out of touch”.
Emmanuel Macron has still to announce his widely expected bid for a second term in office in next April’s presidential elections. His eventual rivals accuse him of unfairly using his position to already campaign in disguise, and notably when France takes over the rotating, six-month presidency of the EU Council on January 1st. As Ellen Salvi reports, it will give Macron the opportunity of testing his election campaign arguments to win over the Eurosceptics among his potential electorate on the Right, and notably on the handling of the Covid-19 crisis and immigration controls.
