16 TIME April 11/April 18, 2022
WORLD
Macron positions himself
as the statesman of Europe
BY VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS
has assailed Putin and used his fre-
quent talks with the Russian leader
to cement his stature as statesman.
That has also helped bolster his key
argument : that Europe needs to reduce
its dependence on Washington and cut
its own path to power.BUT MACRON’S WARTIME ROLE
can take him only so far. Even as vot-
ers look set to give him another term,
many can barely conceal their distaste
for a man they see as a know-it-all dis-
connected from hardship. After he
raised fuel prices in 2018, hundreds
of thousands of “yellow vest” activ-
ists protested for months. Emmanuel
Rivière, head of international polling
for Kantar Public in Paris, believes the
pandemic saved Macron: the French
leader committed billions of euros to
supporting businesses, and rolled out
a mammoth vaccine program. France
bounced back, and now has its lowest
unemployment rate in years.
But tough times could be coming.
“There is a high level of detestation of
Macron, which is unprecedented in
France,” says Marc Lazar, professor of
political history at Sciences Po Univer-
sity in Paris. Those feelings could boil
over as prices rise and a €171 billion
deicit begins afecting daily lives. Ma-
cron quietly announced March 10 that
he intended to raise the public- pension
age from 62 to 65. Voters say inlation
is their top concern, and many struggle
to make ends meet. About 30% of vot-
ers intend to pick far-right names on
April 10, while the far-left Jean-Luc
Mélenchon grabs 14% for an outside
shot at the runof. All that portends
trouble. “You have a big risk of a new
social revolt,” Lazar says.
Observers warn that Macron’s
phantom campaign could come back
to haunt him. “The anger among the
French has not been expressed in this
election,” says Antoine Bristielle, a
public-opinion expert at the Fonda-
tion Jean-Jaurès in Paris. Instead, he
says, “it will be expressed in the street
in his next ive years in oice.” FOR A LEADER GIVEN TO DRAMATIC FLOURISHES,
French President Emmanuel Macron announced his run
for re-election with uncharacteristic humility. In a simple
letter published in French newspapers in early March, he
addressed his citizens: “I am seeking your trust again.”
So began an odd campaign—if you can call it that. Ma-
cron’s 11 rivals in the irst-round vote on April 10 spent
months sniping while Macron glided above the fray. The
runof on April 24 looks likely to be a rematch of 2017, with
Macron against the far-right Marine Le Pen, and he seems set
to hand her another defeat. “It seems over before it has even
begun,” Le Monde declared of the “phantom campaign.”
His rocket ride to power ive years ago stunned Europe
and crushed France’s mainstream Republican and Social-
ist parties. This time around, he’s playing the President, not
the candidate. Macron, 44, has appeared to watch the elec-
tion from afar, too busy with crises like the war in Ukraine
to focus on politics. He was even photographed unshaven
in his ornate oice, in jeans and a hoodie—widely seen as a
nod to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose viral
appearances get plenty of French airtime.
While Macron’s popularity is up since Russia’s inva-
sion began, his far-right rivals have scrambled to explain
their long support for Russian President Vladimir Putin;
Le Pen, 53, pulped more than a million pamphlets showing
her shaking Putin’s hand. By contrast, Macron—who has the
luck of France being the E.U.’s current rotating President—
‘It seems
over before
it has even
begun.’
SOLENN DE ROYER,
JOURNALIST, IN
LE MONDE ON MARCH 8◁
A campaign poster
showing President
Macron, on March 22THE BRIEF NEWS
JEREMIAS GONZALEZ—AP