In mid-March 2017, the general German public discovered Emmanuel Macron. Chatting on the terrace of a Berlin café before meeting Angela Merkel, the candidate of En Marche! contrasts with the solemn image that French officials across the Rhine can convey. The European commitment, the desire to reform advocated by the former Minister of the Economy earned him tokens of sympathy on the left and on the right. Exceptionally, the spokesperson for Ms. Merkel even wishes “good luck” to Mr. Macron, erected as a dam against the far right, before facing Marine Le Pen in the second round.
Five years later, despite differences of opinion on certain European issues, the esteem for the French president has not diminished. Except that, this time, the French electoral campaign goes fairly unnoticed. “In the major dailies, nine of the ten most read articles concern the war in Ukraine and not the French presidential election. It has a big effect. Until last week, it was not yet clear that Le Pen could have a chance of winning the presidential election. Everyone assumed that Macron would return for a second term and that there would be no big change, ”said political scientist Yann Wernert of the Jacques Delors Center in Berlin.
“You have to take this lack of interest for confidence”, abounds the publicist Albrecht von Lucke, certain of the victory of the president-candidate.
“He remains a driving force for Europe”
At the dawn of a probable reissue of the duel with Marine Le Pen, the settling of Emmanuel Macron in the polls as the first round approaches on Sunday does not cause a great stir. For Berlin, the choice is clear. The socialist Anne Hidalgo, member of the same political family as Olaf Scholz, having not broken through, the re-election of the outgoing is the best option. The sensitivities of the Chancellor’s coalition, bringing together social democrats, ecologists and liberals, correspond to the positioning of the candidate of the Republic in March. The teams know each other: Mr. Scholz was in Finance from 2017 to 2021 under Angela Merkel and played a key role in the genesis of the recovery plan during the health crisis.
Potential qualified for the second round, Emmanuel Macron is also the only pro-European. With the RN candidate or Jean-Luc Mélenchon at the Élysée, Berlin would be faced with a partner wanting to unravel European construction. The Franco-German axis, engine of the EU, would have lead in the wing. “We would still be forced to find some kind of common ground”, conjectures Heidi Marleen Bräuer, director of the Franco-German program at the Jacques-Delors centre.
Between yellow vests and health crisis, Germany has seen reforms stall in its neighbor. But for Tagesspiegel journalist Albrecht Meier, who follows the French countryside, Emmanuel Macron “has not fallen from his pedestal”: “He remains a driving force for Europe” with his defense of a pugnacious democracy and of European strategic autonomy, themes that have come back to the fore with the war in Ukraine.