Time - USA (2019-09-30)

34 Time September 30, 2019

That was surely enough to rattle any leader. Yet Ma-
cron, leaning forward on his leather couch, offers an-
other view. “In a certain way, the gilets jaunes were
very good for me,” he says, as the afternoon shad-
ows lengthened on the lawn outside. “Because it re-
minded me who I should be.”
The question of who Emmanuel Macron should
be has occupied the French, and many around the
world, in the three years since the then Economy
Minister launched a grassroots uprising of his own.
That movement would deliver him the presidency in
May 2017 and smash a political order that had lasted
for half a century. Macron first and foremost saw him-
self as a reformer, throwing himself into dismantling
rules that he believed had long strangled France’s
economic prospects. He and his La Ré publique En
Marche party (LREM) scrapped a wealth tax levied
on France’s richest residents, trimmed the country’s
labyrinthine labor regulations and made it less costly
for companies to hire and fire staff.
But Macron also saw himself as a global leader.
In the two years since his victory, the President, just
41, has inserted himself into every international
crisis, striding into the vacuum left by the weakened
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Brexit-
distracted U.K. and a U.S. President in retreat from
the role of leader of the West. In a fractious European
Union, Macron has quietly worked to shape the
agenda on pivotal issues like the environment,
defense, trade and data privacy. TIME called him
the “next leader of Europe” on its November 2017

cover, adding a caveat—“if only he can lead France.”

Over the past year, he has struggled to answer the

question raised by the second part of that headline. As

the President bestrode the world stage and dreamed

up far- reaching reforms to transform France, many of

his constituents grew restless. From the start, some

in France regarded Macron as an arrogant know-it-

all, whose past as an investment banker suggested

membership in a hated elite. Macron did little to

assuage that opinion in office; scrapping the wealth

tax saved the richest French millions. He was quickly

nicknamed le Président des riches (the President of

the rich).

Then, in November 2018, Macron announced an

increased fuel tax to help pay for his ambitious green-

energy rollout. Thousands snapped in anger, provid-

ing the raw ingredients for the Yellow Vests move-

World

It’s a bright early-

September day inside

France’s presidential Élysée

Palace, and President

Emmanuel Macron is

reflecting on the grueling

12 months just past, with the

so-called Yellow Vests (gilets

jaunes) protesters raging

across the country, many

aiming their fury at him.

MA

GN

UM

(^) PH
OTO
S