French President Emmanuel Macron, who was reelected on Sunday (April 24), will face several challenges in his second term. One of the most important will be to unite France after these elections and to gain support from the most popular classes, which have mostly preferred to vote for radical candidates from the right and left (in this case in the first ballot) or to abstain . On this depends the strength of the opposition Macron could face after the June legislature and the progress of unpopular measures like pension reform.
According to partial results from the Interior Ministry, Macron was reelected with 58.55% of the vote. Marine Le Pen, of the far right, his secondround rival, received 41.45%, the best result ever achieved by the National Assembly (also known in Portuguese as Reagrupamento Nacional, formerly Front National) poll.
The abstention rate was 28%, one of the highest in decades.
Despite a sizable lead, even more so for an incumbent president, there was a sizable lead for Le Pen’s farright, who won 33.9% of the vote in the second round of the 2017 presidential election.
Macron’s emphatic victory over Le Pen was made possible largely by the electorate of JeanLuc Mélenchon of the far left, who finished third with 22% in the first round. Like Le Pen, Mélenchon primarily attracts lowerincome French people.
1 in 3 Macron was reelected with 58% of the vote; Marine Le Pen, of the far right, her rival in the second round, won 41% Photo: Reuters via BBC
Macron was reelected with 58% of the vote; Marine Le Pen, of the far right, her rival in the second round, won 41% Photo: Reuters via BBC
The goal of these farleft voters, who voted for Macron on the second ballot, was solely to stop Le Pen’s rise to power. But a minority of Mélenchon’s electorate, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, voted for Le Pen in protest against Macron. The president has been criticized for not looking after the lowincome population.
In his speech on Sunday evening, after the release of the projections showing his victory, held in the gardens of the Champs de Mars, with the Eiffel Tower in the background (in 2017 Macron had chosen the Louvre Pyramid as the backdrop), the reelected president admitted that France is divided, and vowed to find “answers” to French people who have expressed “anger and disunity” when voting for Le Pen or abstaining in the election.
He also acknowledged that part of the electorate voted for him “not to support his ideas, but to stop the far right” and said he wants to push his project “strongly in the years to come, including as a custodian of divisions and differences were voiced.”
Macron also said in his speech that “he is not the candidate of one camp, but the president of all” and promised to overhaul the method of governing France, saying the coming years would not be a “continuation” of the current term . He also stated that “no one will be left behind”.
2 out of 3 French Presidential Election, Second Round Vote Percentage — Photo: BBC
French presidential election, percentage of the vote in the second ballot — Photo: BBC
Reconciling uppermiddleclass France and large urban centers, in addition to the higherincome retirees who make up Macron’s constituency, with more popular France from regions with higher unemployment or rural areas and small towns opting for Le Pen (and poor peripheries , where Mélenchon does well) is important for another Macron challenge: securing a parliamentary majority in June’s general election.
Traditionally, the French vote for the party of the newly elected president in general elections, which take place shortly after the presidential elections, in order to guarantee him a majority in parliament, facilitating the start of his government. In 2017, Macron, who had never voted in an election and had just founded a party, managed the feat of winning a parliamentary majority from scratch.
But this time, with the rearrangement of the political scenario in France in these presidential elections which, together with Macron’s centrist Republica em Marche party, consolidated two radical forces that of Le Pen and that of Mélenchon the task could be much more difficult, complicated. In this part of the electorate, the President meets with strong rejection.
In a speech Sunday night, shortly after projections pointing to Macron’s victory were released, Mélenchou called on voters to push hard for what he calls the “third round” to guarantee a defeat for the president in Parliament and thus change “the course” of France.
He urges the French to “elect him Prime Minister”. In reality, it is the president who elects the prime minister after the legislature and not the electorate directly. But if the head of state does not get a parliamentary majority, he must appoint a prime minister from the party that won the most seats in the vote. It’s called “living together”. That’s what Melenchon is waiting for.
Marine Le Pen also used the announcement of Macron’s election victory to start the “battle of the legislature” in her speech on Sunday evening after her party for the first time passed the 40 percent hurdle of the votes it had from the “great victory”. ‘ shouted.
Another major challenge for Macron will be the implementation of his pension reform, which includes a gradual increase in the minimum age from the current 62 to 64 (he has agreed to discuss with union leaders the possibility of capping the increase to 64).
3 of 3 A challenge for Macron will be the implementation of his pension reform, which will gradually increase the minimum age from the current 62 to 64 or 65 — Photo: EPA via BBC
A challenge for Macron will be the implementation of his pension reform, which will gradually increase the minimum age from the current 62 to 64 or 65 (Photo: EPA via BBC).
After the Yellow Vests crisis in 2018 and 2019, which started with raising a fuel tax and turned into large, often violent, protests, among other things for improving the purchasing power of the population, the government fears a new social mobilization on the streets against the pension reform project.
The measure will be discussed in the second half of the year after the parliamentary elections. To ensure greater acceptance of this reform, Macron says that part of the savings generated by raising the minimum age will be used to finance the correction of pensions according to inflation (which is not the case in France) and that this could already be done starting be applied for in July.
President Macron will continue to face the challenge of dealing with high public debt, which accounts for around 113% of GDP and has increased by 600 billion euros during his tenure. Almost a third of that extra spending is due to whatever it takes policies during the pandemic, which saw the government pay salaries during lockdown periods alongside a range of business aid and tax exemptions. In addition, as economic activity declined, so did government revenues.
This high level of public debt may limit the government’s room for maneuver to take measures to improve the purchasing power of lowincome people in the current context of rising inflation.
In addition, the international scene with the unfolding war in Ukraine is an additional concern for Macron. “We are going through tragic times,” Macron said in his speech on Sunday night in reference to the conflict.
As the newspaper Le Monde writes, this reelection should apparently not lead to the socalled “state of grace” that a French president experiences when he is elected, which usually lasts a few months at the beginning of Macron’s term.