French PM under Pressure after Macron’s Alliance Loses Absolute Majority

THE GUARDIAN: Élisabeth Borne faces calls to resign after legislative election result throws French politics into turmoil

France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, is facing calls for her resignation after Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance lost its absolute majority in parliament in the legislative election at the weekend.

Borne, who was appointed only a month ago, said the result created an unusual situation that posed “a risk for our country”.

After five years of controlling the Assemblée Nationale, Macron now faces a challenge on delivering key policies, including raising the retirement age and a shake-up of the country’s benefits and welfare system. His government will need to seek alliances and compromises to push measures through.

Macron had insisted before the election that all ministers who lost their seats would have to stand down. Borne, who escaped having to resign by narrowly winning her Normandy constituency, said on Sunday night: “The situation is a risk for our country, given the challenges we have to face at the national and international level. We have to draw the consequences of this vote. » | Kim Willsher and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris | Monday, June 20, 2022

Emmanuel Macron Is Playing a Dangerous Game

Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
OPINION : GUEST ESSAY
THE NEW YORK TIMES: n 2017, Emmanuel Macron was “a meteor born under a lucky star.” A former banker without experience in elective office, he benefited during his first presidential campaign from President François Hollande choosing not to seek re-election, while the conservative candidate and front-runner, François Fillon, faced an embezzlement charge.

In 2022, the planets appeared to align once more, this time on account of international circumstances rather than national dynamics. As president of the European Union since January, Mr. Macron has enhanced his status as a legitimate interlocutor with Vladimir Putin, even if his attempts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been unsuccessful. All opinion polls have shown Mr. Macron leading in Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, but his lead has been swiftly declining.

In his first campaign, Mr. Macron claimed to be “neither left nor right ,” a slogan that had seduced many who are weary of the old political divisions. Once elected, however, he quickly revealed what that meant in practice. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, shrinking the welfare state and hollowing out democracy, Mr. Macron drifted rightward, to the point of shocking some members of La République En Marche!, his party.

Far from changing course, Mr. Macron appears to be doubling down. In recent months, his appeal to the right-wing electorate has become ever more explicit, orienting his platform around two of the right’s traditional themes — control of immigration and stiffening of secularism. It may deliver him another victory. But Mr. Macron is playing a dangerous game. By absorbing his opponents’ views into his own platform, he risks bringing about a political landscape hazardously skewed to the right. » | Didier Fassin | Saturday, April 9, 2022

Didier Fassin, anthropologist and physician, is James D. Wolfensohn professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Le Pen Feud Deepens as French Far-right Leader’s Niece Withdraws Support

THE GUARDIAN: Marine Le Pen calls Marion Maréchal’s decision not to back presidential bid ‘brutal, violent and painful’

Marine Le Pen, who has expressed her ‘incomprehension’ of the politics behind Maréchal’s decision. Photograph: Alain Robert/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock
France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen has described her niece’s decision not to support her presidential campaign as “brutal, violent and painful”.

Marion Maréchal, who dropped Le Pen from her name in 2018, said she was considering whether to transfer her allegiance to Éric Zemmour, who is even further to the right.

In an interview with Le Parisien, Maréchal, who at 22 became the youngest MP in the Assemblée Nationale in 2012, before stepping down in 2017, said her aunt’s “incessant ideological and programme changes” showed a “lack of logic and vision”.

On potentially backing Zemmour, she said: “I’m thinking about it. I haven’t decided. If I support Éric, [it] would not just be a question of passing by and saying hello. It would mean returning to politics. It’s a real life choice, a heavy decision.” » | Kim Willsher in Paris | Friday, January 28, 2022

«J'ai envie de retourner en politique» : les confidences de Marion Maréchal au Figaro : L'ancienne députée FN du Vaucluse confie que «la cohérence, la vision, la stratégie» la font pencher pour Éric Zemmour. Elle envisage de se présenter aux législatives de 2022. »

The Rise of Éric Zemmour Shows How Far France Has Shifted to the Right

THE GUARDIAN: The far-right media pundit is now a presidential candidate – and his toxic ideas have ever more mainstream support

Éric Zemmour announces his candidacy for the 2022 presidential election in a video broadcast on social media, Paris, 30 November 2021. Photograph: Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images
On 17 November, the far-right journalist and polemicist Éric Zemmour went on trial in Paris on charges of incitement to racial hatred. In September 2020, he had said on the French news broadcaster CNews that unaccompanied foreign minors were “thieves, they’re murderers, they’re rapists, that’s all they are. We must send them back”. He did not appear at the trial and was represented by his lawyers, who said the charges were unfounded. The verdict is expected to be delivered next year.

Zemmour has previously been convicted of incitement to racial hatred and religious hatred and been tried and acquitted in several other cases. But the stakes are different this time: the defendant is now a candidate for president of the French republic. In early November, polls indicated that up to 17% of the electorate would choose him for next president. This placed him behind only Emmanuel Macron, suggesting that the second round of the election could be between the two men. On 30 November, he officially announced his candidacy. » | Didier Fassin * | Wednesday, November 1, 2021

* Didier Fassin is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and director of studies at the École des Hautes Études, Paris

On the Scrappy Fringes of French Politics, Marine Le Pen Tries to Rebrand

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader and main challenger to President Emmanuel Macron in next year’s election, wants to persuade voters that she and her party can govern France.

LA TRINITÉ-SUR-MER, France — It was the setting for a straightforward origin story, or so it seemed. Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader aiming to be France’s next president, came to launch her latest campaign in the seaside resort where her firebrand father once announced his own bid for the presidency from the family home.

But the recent trip to the family base at La Trinité-sur-Mer in western France, where Ms. Le Pen posed for selfies with admirers, schmoozed with oystermen and took TV journalists on boat rides, was a critical part of a rebranding effort toward respectability.

Steering the motorboat was Florent de Kersauson, a prominent businessman who, after decades of backing center-right candidates, was switching to Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally. By embracing Mr. de Kersauson, a former senior executive at the telecommunications giant Alcatel, Ms. Le Pen latched on to the kind of establishment figure who could help persuade voters that her party was more than a scrappy, family business. And maybe even assuage doubts about her competence to move into the Élysée Palace.

“The National Rally, formerly the National Front, has gone from being a protest movement to an opposition movement, and is now a government movement,” Ms. Le Pen said. » | Norimitsu Onishi | Sunday, May 16, 2021

France: What Is behind Macron's Drastic Fall in Popularity?

France: What is behind Macron's drastic fall in popularity?

When Emmanuel Macron became the fresh, young face of the French presidency four months ago, he did so with a landslide of support from voters who were looking for a new type of leader.

But things have quickly turned sour, according to the polls, which show his popularity has evaporated faster than almost any other leader.

Al Jazeera's David Chater reports from Paris.

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Macron's Next Steps: French President-elect Is Re-drawing the Political Landscape (Parts 1 & 2)

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Le Pen Savages Macron as France's Mainstream Rallies behind Him

THE GUARDIAN: Front National leader accuses centrist rival of being weak on terror as presidential election moves into second round

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right Front National party, has savaged the centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron as a “hysterical, radical Europeanist” who is weak on jihadi terror, as the country’s demoralised mainstream parties threw their weight behind the independent frontrunner in the first day of campaigning for the presidential runoff.

“He is for total open borders. He says there is no such thing as French culture. There is not one area where he shows one ounce of patriotism,” Le Pen said of Macron in her first public statements since addressing supporters on Sunday night after finishing second to the former investment banker in the first-round vote. » | Jon Henley, European Affairs Correspondent | Monday, April 24, 2017


Don’t assume Marine Le Pen is beaten: it’s delusional, and dangerous, thinking »

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