OHe found it hard to believe, listening to the President of the Republic on Thursday, July 14, that his political room for maneuver was very limited. Emmanuel Macron acted as if he still had an absolute majority in Parliament, he did not give up on his opponents, who dream of him being weakened or even marginalized. His interview had the particularity of closing a military parade, marked by the drama of the war in Ukraine, and of drawing lessons from the long electoral sequence that the French have just experienced.
The Head of State relied on his sovereign functions to frame the challenges of the period and not to concede anything as to the framework of his presidential project. Its objective is always to get the French to work longer to finance their social model without increasing the debt or increasing taxes.
This rather abrupt framing puts an end to an electoral sequence placed under the sign of avoidance and one-upmanship of all kinds. By noting that the war in Ukraine was going to last, that it was weighing on European growth and that it was putting its energy supply under great strain, Emmanuel Macron finally decided to talk about the difficulties awaiting the French. From the start of the school year, they will have to adapt to the “sobriety”reconnect with ” energy savings “ and maybe even suffer “load shedding”, if the objective of reducing consumption by 10% by 2024 is not enough.
It was high time to say clearly that nothing would be like before. Tensions on oil and gas prices caused by the conflict in Ukraine are only a foretaste of the profound economic and social changes towards which the fight against global warming is leading us.
The other clarification concerns the “whatever the cost” policy, from which the government, under pressure, is struggling to emerge. From next year, the massive devices used to contain the surge in energy prices will become more targeted, the will of Emmanuel Macron being to devote public money to investment in the ecological transition, health , education rather than consumer support systems.
Bluff
These presidential clarifications take a lot of people by surprise: firstly the oppositions, who have been trying since the start of the legislature to impose their law, but also the majority, who thought they had gained independence on the occasion of the new gives policy. Emmanuel Macron concedes him a little slack but within previously fixed limits. He defends the principle of presidential prepotence within the framework of a Ve Republic designed to give the Head of State the means to govern in heavy weather.
It looks like a bluff at the moment, as he lacks the cards to pretend he’s unfettered. With popularity at half mast and suitors who are already thinking of his succession, the head of state is nevertheless. He can only hope to regain his full authority if he manages to develop with the French a pedagogy of the crisis, contrary to the prevailing demagoguery. Models exist, like that of the Minister of the Economy Jacques Delors after the turn of the rigor of 1983, but it was another time.
Isolated, unloved, Emmanuel Macron absolutely needs allies beyond the governmental and parliamentary sphere. He hopes to find them in the “national council for refoundation”, which he still calls for. At this stage, however, the object remains so poorly identified that it looks more like a bet than a trump card.