Emmanuel Macron has lunch this Wednesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Elysee. Last weekend he was in Rome where he spoke with Pope Francis and met with Georgia Meloni, the new Italian far-right prime minister. The sequence does not fail to confirm an impression since his re-election: that of a president who would prefer to concentrate on international affairs rather than domestic ones.
His second term began with very different auspices than the previous one. No more absolute majority in the Palais Bourbon and the excitement of the prospect of re-election. While the crises are linked and overlapping, culminating in fuel shortages in recent days and now strike movements, the government nonetheless needs its arbitrations, even its reformulations. In this context, would Emmanuel Macron have blues?
“Show that you are still in charge”
For the President of the Republic, the doubt settled on the night of his victory in the presidential elections against Marine Le Pen on April 24. Emmanuel Macron seemed happy, but not really elated. Family members were transferred at that time.
“Nothing to do with 2017,” said a historian from the first presidential campaign. “The conquest is no longer there,” another abounded.
Second alert: legislative elections. The president does little campaigning. At the end of the second round, he does not seem to realize what losing his absolute majority means. “Elisabeth Borne had a lot to do to make her understand the risks: a blocked country, motions of censure,” says a pillar of the majority. And to continue her: “she escaped, she said it wasn’t that serious… and then she hit him”.
Since the beginning of the school year, the president no longer immediately seems to have “the” good idea to resolve crises.
A member of the central majority points to the recent Fuels Defense Council as an example. “He didn’t really come out of there with a decision,” he notes. “We understood that it was mainly to show that he was still in charge… to show it, above all.” Our interlocutor insists: “Defense lawyers are normally their specialty!”
“Like a depressed Churchill”
Some deputies also wonder about the topics chosen by Emmanuel Macron as well as their titles. “The end of abundance, retirement, the end of life… it’s a depressive lexicon!”, Judges a figure of the majority.
“He has always had a habit of making the most difficult challenges stimulating, and there… Even the sobriety plan, we could have presented it as an opportunity to make the ecological change. That is how the former Macron would have presented it… Here we present it as a depressed Churchill, ”breathes another.
Several members of the government wonder. “I think he would prefer to focus on the international,” said one minister. “Perhaps I would have preferred a second term in Chirac, very focused on diplomacy,” confirms another. Before qualifying: “But crises happen and he’s used to everyone being there when he pitches.”
A minister sees things differently. “To those who say that he would prefer to talk only about international, I answer that this is not how I feel,” he said. And to add: “I worked part of the morning on the pension reform and he was focused on that. And very mobilized”.
Another member of the government goes in the same direction: “When I see (Emmanuel Macron) in the Council of Ministers, he does not give the impression of being disconnected”. Our source acknowledges in the process that there are, however, “internal score issues” and “different music in the orchestra.” “Maybe that’s what reinforces this impression,” he says.
“He knows he’s playing big” on his estate
Like these ministers, several members of the presidential camp reject the idea of a possible Emmanuel Macron blues. A pillar of the majority gets carried away: “That’s nonsense! He hasn’t lost any of his reformist ambition. Those who say that want to weaken his image.” According to another member of the majority, this idea of ”depression” comes from those who intend to dispute the succession of Emmanuel Macron.
“Those who plan to step on the president to begin with will be at their expense, it is the majority that would be weakened,” warns our source.
His succession, Emmanuel Macron thinks about it. However, it is not the person who will succeed him that worries him, but the party. The head of state would have an “obsession”: “Not to be the president who hands over the keys to the country to the National Rally.”
“Of course he knows he’s playing big. Of course, he doesn’t want us to remember only that if, unfortunately, it happens. He plays, he watches, ”explains a regular visitor to Emmanuel Macron.
looking for a second wind
You are looking for a second wind. But, so far, his attempts aren’t working as well as hoped. Example: the National Council for Refoundation (CNR), totem of the “new method” made of more consultations, sought by Emmanuel Macron.
With this political body, the Head of State wanted to gather around the same table “the political, economic, social, associative forces, the elected representatives of the territories and the citizens drawn”. omitted. The oppositions, accusing him of wanting to avoid Parliament, have sent him an inadmissibility envelope.
“We were clear with the CNR that they wanted to return to the fundamentals that made their launching pad: the debate, the evocation of the resistance. But it was not done. In any case, not in the opinion,” acknowledges a relative. .
A relative of Emmanuel Macron sums up the equation:
“He is hampered in the Ukraine by Putin’s stubbornness, hampered in his will to reform by an Assembly over which he no longer has control, with no prospect of re-election. He must revive himself. But how?”
In any case, Emmanuel Macron will have the opportunity to speak this Wednesday night during an interview on France 2. And this time, the topics will be national and not international.
Source: BFM TV
