Victorious Macron Vows to Unite France after Fending Off Le Pen Threat

THE GUARDIAN: President acknowledges divisions after historic 13 million votes for Le Pen’s anti-immigration party

The pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron has vowed to unite a divided France after winning a second term as French president in a decisive victory against the far-right’s Marine Le Pen, who nonetheless won more than 13 million votes in a historic high for her anti-immigration party.

Macron became the first French leader to win re-election for 20 years, scoring 58.54% to Le Pen’s 41.46%.

Addressing a victory rally at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where his supporters waved French and European flags, Macron vowed to respond “efficiently” to the “anger and disagreement” of voters who chose the far right.

“I know that a number of French people have voted for me today, not to support my ideas but to stop the ideas of the far right,” he said and called on supporters to be “kind and respectful” to others, because the country was riven by “so much doubt, so much division”.

He added: “I’m not the candidate of one camp any more, but the president of all of us.” » | Angelique Chrisafis in Paris | Monday, April 25, 2022


Les Européens soulagés après la réélection d'Emmanuel Macron : Cette réélection constitue «un signal fort en faveur de l'Europe» pour le chancelier allemand Olaf Scholz. Le premier ministre britannique Boris Johnson s'est dit «heureux de continuer à travailler» avec Emmanuel Macron. »

Michael Settle: France Leaning to the Far-right Is a Stark Warning for All European Nations

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 24, 2017. Le Pen has made multiple visits to Russia, as have her father, niece and other[s]
THE HERALD: A disunited France today goes to the polling stations to choose its new or not so new president but as voters in many cases hold their noses, Europe will be holding its breath.

A remarkable intervention ahead of the vote underlined people’s fears that the very future of the European Union could be at stake. In a joint article in Le Monde, the leaders of Germany, Spain and Portugal issued a stark warning to French voters and urged them to back Centrist Emmanuel Macron.

In a direct attack on his rival, Marine Le Pen, they highlighted her previous links to the tyrant in the Kremlin, saying people should not forget “populists and the Far Right in all our countries have made Vladimir Putin an ideological and political model…even if these politicians are now trying to distance themselves from the Russian aggressor”.

They added: “It is a choice between a democratic candidate, who believes France is stronger in a powerful and autonomous EU and a Far Right candidate, who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy; fundamental values that come directly from the French Enlightenment.”

Macron, fiercely pro-EU, wants to strengthen the 27-member bloc while Le Pen, although she has ditched her Frexit ambitions, wants the EU to become more of an association of nation states. » | Michael Settle | Sunday, April 24, 2022

« Nous avons besoin d’une France qui défende nos valeurs européennes communes », plaident les chefs de gouvernement portugais, espagnol et allemand : Antonio Costa, Pedro Sanchez et Olaf Scholz se prononcent, dans une tribune au « Monde », contre « une candidate d’extrême droite qui se range ouvertement du côté de ceux qui attaquent notre liberté et notre démocratie ». »

Le Pen Closer Than Ever to the French Presidency (and to Putin)

THE NEW YORK TIMES: As elections approach Sunday, the far-right candidate is linked to the Russian president by a web of financial ties and a history of support that has hardly dimmed despite the war in Ukraine.

Marine Le Pen, left, the challenger for France’s presidency, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the Kremlin in March 2017. She has supported his annexation of Crimea. | Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev
PARIS — When Europe’s far-right leaders gathered in Madrid in January, they had no problem finding unity on the issues they hold dear, whether cracking down on immigrants or upholding “European Christian ideals.” But as Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, they were divided on one issue: the threat posed by President Vladimir V. Putin.

Marine Le Pen, the extreme-right challenger for the French presidency, objected to a paragraph in the final statement calling for European solidarity to confront “Russian military actions on the eastern border of Europe.” Even in a gathering of illiberal nationalists, she was an outlier in her fealty to Mr. Putin.

Now, on her campaign website, the leaders’ statement appears with that paragraph cut in an unacknowledged change to the text. This little subterfuge is consistent with an embrace of Mr. Putin so complete that even his ravaging of Ukraine has hardly diminished it.

Over the past decade, Ms. Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front, has borrowed millions from a Russian bank, and Ms. Le Pen has supported Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, as well as his incendiary meddling that year in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where just this week Russia redoubled its offensive. Her support for Mr. Putin is one thing in a time of peace and another in a time of war. Russia, a nuclear power, has invaded a European state, and Ms. Le Pen is closer than ever to her cherished goal of becoming president of France, having narrowed the gap with President Emmanuel Macron before the decisive round of the election on Sunday. » | Roger Cohen | Friday, April 22, 2022

Can French Election Rivals Le Pen and Macron Reform Their Images? - BBC News

The Debate: Le Pen Confirms Plan to Ban Muslim Headscarf in Public • FRANCE 24 English

Apr 20, 2022 • The far-right candidate has reiterated her pledge to ban headscarves in public spaces, calling them a “symbol of women’s submission”.

“I don’t attack a religion, Islam, which has every right to be in France,” she says. “The real issue is Islamist terrorism. We must pass legislation against the Islamist ideology that is attacking the very foundations of our Republic.”

“I’m not in favour of banning religious symbols in public. Secularism is a freedom,” Macron says. If Le Pen were to implement such a measure, “France, the cradle of the Enlightenment, would be the first country in the world to ban religious symbols in public.”

Macron May Keep the Presidency, but Le Pen Has Already Won

Christian Hartmann/Reuters
OPINION: GUEST ESSAY
THE NEW YORK TIMES: SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS, France — Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has worked hard during this election campaign to soften, even detoxify, her image. It seems to be working. “I think she’s full of good ideas,” Cyrielle Bernard, a 19-year-old who lives in this picturesque Burgundy town, told me one afternoon last week, chatting in the tobacconist shop where she works. Of all the candidates, she said, “I think she’s the most logical.”

President Emmanuel Macron won in Semur-en-Auxois in the first round of voting this month, but Ms. Le Pen took the larger Burgundy Franche-Comté region, with 27 percent of the vote over Mr. Macron’s 26 percent. Ms. Le Pen’s success comes from casting herself as the defender of the countryside and the working class, focusing on cost-of-living issues and defending social protections. She has also been helped by an image makeover in which she opened up about raising her children as a single mother and now combines tough talk on immigration with social media posts about her cats.

The stigma she has long carried in mainstream politics has been quickly wearing off, and people are supporting her more openly than ever before.

As I drove around rural Burgundy after the first round of voting this month, I came away with a strong sense that while Mr. Macron may well defeat her in the second round this Sunday, in many ways, Ms. Len Pen has already won. In the first round, she put Mr. Macron on the defensive and convinced almost a quarter of voters that she has their best interests at heart. In the second round, polls predict she could easily win more than 40 percent, potentially 10 points more than in 2017. » | Rachel Donadio * | Friday, April 22, 2022

* Ms. Donadio is a contributing writer for The Atlantic based in Paris. She is a former Rome bureau chief and European culture correspondent for The Times.

Macron Wants Cap on ‘Shocking and Excessive’ Executive Pay

THE GUARDIAN: In run-up to the presidential vote, French premier calls for EU-wide ceiling after head of carmaker Stellantis receives €19m

Emmanuel Macron says ‘society will explode’ if CEO salaries are not kept in check in France where executive pay has become a prominent election issue. Photograph: Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA
Emmanuel Macron will push for a cap on excessive executive pay should he be re-elected president after he described as “shocking and excessive” the €19m (£15.7m) pay packet handed to the head of carmaker Stellantis.

Macron, who is campaigning in the run-up to the final vote for the French presidency on 24 April against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, told France Info radio that he was in favour of an EU-wide ceiling for top executives’ pay.

The multimillion-pound payout handed last year to chief executive Carlos Tavares, when French carmaker PSA merged with Italian-US rival Fiat Chrysler to form Stellantis, one of the world’s largest carmakers, has emerged as a prominent issue in the election.

Macron and Le Pen are attempting to woo the 7.7 million people who voted in the first round for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has described the final run-off as “a choice between two evils”. » | Phillip Inman | Friday, April 15, 2022

French Elections: Macron and Le Pen Kick Off Presidency Run-off Campaigns

French President Macron Seeks Re-election

Apr 10, 2022 • A month ago, the French presidential race was offering little to quicken the pulse, with incumbent Emmanuel Macron expected to breeze through to another five-year term.

But far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has run a canny campaign capitalising on the cost-of-living crisis.

And now some are predicting that if she can make it through to the run-off between the two strongest candidates in a fortnight, she could even beat him.

Far-Right France: The Battle for the Soul of France | Foreign Correspondent

Why the French Are Fed Up (and What It Means for Macron) | The Economist

Apr 8, 2022 • The French are miserable. Normally this means defeat for sitting presidents, but Macron is still just about leading in the polls. So what's going on?

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.

Get Ready for a Scary Fortnight in French Politics: A Le Pen Presidency Really Is Possible

THE GUARDIAN: The race for the Elysée could end up as a horror story for anyone who cares about the wellbeing of France or Europe

A seemingly ‘kinder, gentler’ Marine Le Pen in Perpignan on Friday. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
The French election is straying from the script. It was meant to be a predictable remake. It has turned into a thriller. It could end up as a horror story.

A month ago, Emmanuel Macron seemed certain to be the first French president to win a second term in 20 years. After Russia invaded Ukraine, his poll ratings soared. He built a 12-point lead in a probable second-round match-up with the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, and a 15-point lead over all other candidates in the first round.

But with that first round taking place on Sunday, Macron’s lead has all but evaporated. In the most recent polls, he only has a two- to five-point advantage over Le Pen in round one, and a two- to eight-point lead over her in the two-candidate runoff on 24 April.

Most French political analysts believe Macron will still prevail. Le Pen has magically evaded, so far, any reckoning for her long years as a Vladimir Putin sympathiser. In the second round of French elections, the presidential credentials of candidates are put to a greater stress test than in the multicandidate first round. » | John Lichfield | Friday, April 8, 2022

Ségolène Royal: I Voted Emmanuel Macron in Both Rounds of French Election - BBC Newsnight

Ségolène Royal, who was the Socialist candidate for French president 10 years ago. She's currently a government minister and one of the biggest figures in French politics. Is she happy about Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French elections? She spoke to Evan Davis.

What Does France's New President-elect Have to Offer? – Inside Story

Change You Can Believe In? Macron Win Signals New Era In French Politics (Parts 1 & 2)

France Presidential Election: The World Reacts to President-elect Macron's Victory

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French Election: How Macron Defeated Le Pen to Become President - BBC News

The pro-European centrist, Emmanuel Macron, will be France's next president. Within a few hours of being declared the winner - Mr Macron promised to heal divisions and restore confidence in the European Union.

What Is At Stake in the French Election?

May. 06, 2017 - 3:42 - James Kirchick provides insight