Another five years of Macron
Bonjour!
To celebrate our final Living The French Elections 2022 discussion group, we had a roundtable discussion with four panellists, two newcomers and two former guest speakers: Director of the European Union Centre at RMIT, Bruce Wilson, Project Manager at CNRS in Melbourne who also holds a Master of Public Policy, Camille Bitton, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Toulouse, Antony Dabila, and lawyer and Professor in Public Law, Jean-Claude Beaujour.
The panellists were asked two key questions: (1) what are their biggest concerns for France over the next five years; and (2) what do they see as Macron’s greatest challenges.
Bruce provided an EU perspective. Although Macron is the most significant EU leader at the moment, since Angela Merkel stepped down as Chancellor of Germany, he has struggled to strengthen the EU project. Macron has been too broad with his policies and needs to be more specific. He needs to define what legacy he wants to leave behind.
Antony’s and Jean-Claude’s messages were clear – it’s not over yet! They were above all concerned with the legislative elections, known in France as the 3rd election round. The parties are in the process of choosing their coalitions, which will determine just how much reign Macron has over France. In 2017, Macron won the absolute majority in the French parliament giving him full power to implement his policies. This year, it is hard to predict what will happen. Will Macron get pulled to the left or the right as the parties form their alliances?
Camille emphasised that what we just witnessed in France was a re-election, something which has not occurred in French politics since the years of Jacques Chirac two decades ago. She was also full of key statistics.
There was an abstention rate of 28% in the final election round, one of the highest rates the fifth republic has ever seen. Le Pen won over the majority of working class and low socioeconomic voters, whereas Macron’s greatest supporters were retirees and the wealthy.
Interestingly, 41% of young people (18-25 years) did not vote and, if they did, the majority voted for Le Pen. This was a stark difference to the first round where the majority of young people voted for the socialist candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. From this, we can conclude that the French youth are either concerned with climate change (which was a key feature of Mélenchon’s campaign) or identitarianism (the right-wing ideology that aligns with Le Pen’s views).
In my opinion, it is the growing support for the Far Right and anti-politics sentiment in French society that is of grave concern. People voted for the Far Right in droves, the most they ever have in French history.Macron won this time around, but he will be ineligible of running again in five years’ time. This will leave the door wide open for Le Pen. If people’s belief in the current political system, in democracy, is dwindling now, what will it be like in 50, 100 years? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of politics?
I hope you have enjoyed this series of blog posts of the French elections as much as I have running the discussion group.
À bientôt
Nicole
Dr Nicole McLean