It was less than six months after his election to the presidency, in 2017. Emmanuel Macron sought to be understood and, perhaps, to be loved. Presented as a spirit « disruptive » and a politician “out of system”, the Head of State had agreed to take the writer Emmanuel Carrère with him for more than a week to follow him on an official trip to Greece and the West Indies, to the island of Saint-Martin devastated by the passage of Hurricane Irma. In a long portrait published in the British daily The Guardian of October 20, 2017, the author of Limonov or of The Opponent (POL, 2011 and 2000) described a man “who does not sweat » , “able to seduce a chair”and found: “Anyone who has had his hand shaken by Macron is lost to the opposition: he is destined to vote Macron and convert to Macronism. But you can’t shake hands with everyone in the country. And then, what is macronism? »
A five-year term has passed and the question still remains an enigma, including for part of Macronie. The debates that have agitated the executive since the start of the school year are an illustration of this. For Transport Minister Clément Beaune, a loyal supporter of the President from the start, taxing companies’ “superprofits” was a matter of course: tackling the « interest » is in the original macronist DNA, he thought. But for the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, to embark on this punitive path towards companies was to betray the presidential mantra not to increase taxes, especially when they target the productive apparatus.
On ecology, the same disorder seized the troops of the Head of State. After having promised, during the campaign, a second mandate which “would be ecological or would not be”leaving the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to claim a “radicality” on the subject, Emmanuel Macron let himself go, Monday, September 12 before the Presidential Press Association (APP), to denounce the practices « aberrant » of a few climate-damaging ultra-rich.
But regulate private jets in France as some in his camp suggested? Out of the question. The economic attractiveness of the country, which Emmanuel Macron prides himself on having improved, would come out damaged, underlines an adviser to the executive. On the pension reform, same perplexity. Emmanuel Macron relaunched the explosive subject on Monday before the APP, not excluding imposing it on a forced march by integrating it into the Social Security financing bill, even if it means having recourse to 49.3. The second five-year term should, however, illustrate the “new method” of a President of the Republic committing, with the National Council for Refoundation, to consultation and listening.
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