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Macron, a year of fall, four of uncertainty

Macron, a year of fall, four of uncertainty

One year after his re-election as French president, Emmanuel Macron He has seen the credit with which he won the elections dissipate almost without campaigning and he faces the remaining four years with his lowest popularity ratings and without a majority in the legislative chambers.

The pension reform, approved a month ago at the limit of parliamentary procedures and in the midst of a strong popular response, embodies the complex panorama that Macron faces to continue carrying out the political initiative.

“There is a fracture with society and to this is added the absence of a political majority that allows it to advanceexplains the director of the opinion observatory of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, Antoine Bristielle, to EFE.

This opinion is widespread and is reflected in the editorials of the main newspapers, which are highly critical of the president.

“More isolated than ever”estimates the leftist Libération, while the conservative Le Figaro considers that “Macron exasperates” and the more favorable Le Monde believes that “doubt has set in”even within his party.

A look at the polls does not feed the optimism of the president, who has seen his popularity rating plummet to the 26%similar to the one it had at the worst moment of the crisis of the “yellow vests”, that forced him in 2019 to give a swerve to his politics.

Then came the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and Macron managed the storm in such a way that on April 24, 2022 he became the first French president in half a century to revalidate power with the Head of State and Government under his command.

It was the last good news he has had since then, since a few months later he lost the absolute majority in the National Assembly and began a legislative ordeal that has compromised his image as a president in constant activity.

“Macron needs to show that he is always on the move and that is why he wanted to do without the parties and without the unions. But he cannot do the same with Parliament ”estimates Bristielle, who believes that the current situation only increases his authoritarian image.

“Visceral rejection”

According to a survey published by the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche, one in two French people is “very unhappy” with its policy, which reveals “a gut rejection” in a good part of the population, according to the director of the Ifop polling institute, Frédéric Dabi.

In the last year, Macron has seen how the negative opinions against him have radicalized, well above those he suffered at the end of 2018, when the “yellow vests”.

The delay in the minimum retirement age has dissipated most of his sympathy capital and a good part of his legislative effort, according to the polls. The program with which he prevailed a year ago seems reduced to that one measure.

The results are also relative. In one year it has not managed to reduce unemployment, although it is true that in the previous five 1.7 million jobs were created and that the unemployment rate stood at historically low levels, somewhat above the 7%.

With the broken dialogue with the unions, some of his promises have an arduous journey to get ahead, while others, such as the reinforcement of justice, the police or the hospitals, await the final push in a drawer.

The president now wants to relaunch more popular reforms, has promised a salary increase for teachers, intends to improve the health system and maintain investment in future sectors, such as electric batteries.

But his speech now has more difficulties to convince a public opinion that has lost the faith that it had in 2017 in an almost unknown to make him the youngest president in history.

Macron, who turned 45 in December, now has four uncertain years ahead to relaunch the machinery, with the horizon of an end to his career, since he cannot run for a third term.

A situation that “it makes it more complex to maintain the solidity of its own in-laws”according to Bristielle, and that fuels the ambitions within his Government, from the head of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, to that of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Macron does not control his troops, another trench in the difficult reconstruction of his image.

Source: EFE

Source: Gestion

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