Macron's march

Voting a newcomer to power represents a leap of faith

Europe may have dodged the existential crisis after France voted for a former investment banker heading a year-old political movement and a bare two years of experience in the Socialist government of the deeply unpopular François Hollande. The youngest head of state since Napoleon, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron’s feat in cornering 65 per cent of the ballot to Marine Le Pen’s 35 per cent in the run-off masks many formidable challenges, however. Napoleonic luck — in the exit of discredited traditional challengers — a personable manner, an elite background and a romantic back-story sustained him through the campaign. Beyond the broad rubric of being “neither right nor left” — pro-Europe and pro-Nato, pro-business and inclusive but pro-immigration reform — Mr Macron revealed few details of his agenda. His first challenge will be to establish a political base for his En Marche! party in the upcoming parliamentary elections. 

Convention dictates that the prime minister who is the head of government and appoints the Cabinet in consultation with the president, comes from the party that controls the lower chamber. This unique system of “cohabitation” could mean that Mr Macron will have to share power with a prime minister of a different party (the Socialist Party currently dominates). Mr Macron may draw hope from the fact that the French rejected the traditional parties. But the anti-Europe far-right movement is far from vanquished. Ms Le Pen’s National Front strongholds in the “rust-belts” of the north-east and pockets of the south-east are intact, and she has improved her vote share — from about 18 per cent in the 2012 run-off to 21.7 per cent in this year’s first round. Though her party holds just two seats in the current chamber, an expansion of the National Front cannot be ruled out. Mr Macron certainly holds a strong suit; his education in the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the French institution that produces its governing elite is one of them. The other is that his movement is built from supporters of the one-time presidential hopeful, former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn. When Mr Strauss-Kahn stepped aside after a sex scandal, many of his team, considered among the brightest minds in the French government, gravitated to Mr Macron when he was appointed as the minister of the economy in 2014. 

Mr Macron is less inclined to the dirigisme that dominates popular thinking, and favours phasing in a tax cut from 33 to 25 per cent. Instead of scrapping the famous 35-hour work week and raising the official retirement age, he plans to enable firms to negotiate these elements with their employees. The outcome of the June elections, then, will determine Mr Macron’s ability to address the issues that assail Europe’s third-largest economy — a 10 per cent unemployment rate with youth unemployment in the high twenties, anaemic growth (1.6 per cent in 2016) — the grim problem of home-grown terrorism and rallying a divided nation. His success is extraordinary but he should be chastened from the message from the hustings, with the country recording one of the lowest turnouts in decades — 25 per cent of voters did not cast their vote and 12 per cent turned in blank or spoiled ballots, suggesting that his mandate is less popular than he should assume.