PARIS — Just when things were looking up for Emmanuel Macron, he went skiing.
The French president has of late started to turn the page on months of damaging protests and terrible poll ratings, just in time for the European Parliament election.
His approval ratings, though still low, have been rising. The weekly Yellow Jacket protests have grown smaller since the beginning of the year. The nationwide “Great Debate,” the town hall debates Macron launched in response to demands for more political participation, helped absorb some of the anger. His party La République en Marche (LREM) has consistently been ahead in polls in the run-up to the EU election, and he launched his campaign with an ambitious call to renew Europe’s social contract. He even went skiing last weekend.
Alas, that was when the Yellow Jackets had one of their most violent weekends. While the president was off in the Pyrenees, masked protesters were setting fire to flagship stores on the Champs-Élysées and doing the same to small news kiosks across Paris. It was a stark reminder of how vulnerable his gains are.
“The president doesn’t want all that has been accomplished by the Great Debate, this unprecedented democratic exercise, to be erased,” said an official in Macron’s entourage, who wasn’t allowed to speak on the record. However, the official didn’t want to address criticism of Macron’s skiing trip and the Elysée press office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The president of course decides everything, it’s very centralized in his world.” — LREM member
Macron’s woes aren’t limited to the Yellow Jackets. More than 30,000 people marched in Paris on Saturday calling on the government to take more action to protect the environment. It was the perfect embodiment of the fine line Macron has to walk in order to balance two of his presidential campaign promises: taking more action to help the environment and improving people’s purchasing power, a perennial French challenge.
The president has repeatedly said that the issues driving the anger predate him. Nevertheless, much of the venom has been directed at him personally. Despite running a grassroots presidential campaign, he has never quite shaken off his image as “the president of the rich” (skiing trips don’t help). That is in part because of his banking background and France’s complicated relationship with financial success. But it is also because most of the reforms he chose to push through were seen as favoring the rich.
At a time when calls for more direct political participation have risen in many Western nations, Macron has faced intense criticism of his governing style. From early on in his presidential campaign, he promised he would lead like Jupiter, the king of the gods in Roman mythology, restoring authority to the state.
“The president of course decides everything, it’s very centralized in his world,” a member of LREM, who wasn’t allowed to speak on the record, said.
But others dispute that as an outdated view and point to the Great Debate as a sign of how Macron has learned from his mistakes.
Emmanuel Macron speaks during a meeting as part of the “Great National Debate” | Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images
“The number of people who participated in the Great Debate is much larger than those who’ve protested under the Yellow Jackets banner,” the official close to Macron said.
The precise number of people who took part in the debate is hard to determine. According to the Great Debate Mission, the government department in charge of it, there were 1,932,884 questionnaires filled out online, but they were anonymous and each participant submitted at least four, so the precise number is unknown. There were also more than 10,000 town hall debates of varying sizes organized across the country. At the height of the Yellow Jacket protests, in November, 282,000 people demonstrated in one day.
“The great debate was a success because of the non-negligible participation level and because it increased Emmanuel Macron’s approval ratings among voters, especially right-wing voters,” said Jean Daniel Lévy, political and polling director at analytics firm Harris Interactive.
The plan now is to analyze all the grievances raised during the debates and roll out policies that aim to respond to them.
“There is very high risk of disappointment in this next phase,” said Lévy, adding that “people have very high expectations in terms of the proposals the president will make to increase social justice and political representation.”
Disappointment isn’t the only risk for Macron. Another is being let down by his close confidantes. His interior minister, Christophe Castaner, was caught by paparazzi in a nightclub two weeks ago, a few hours after a Yellow Jacket protest. His Europe minister, Nathalie Loiseau, flubbed announcing her desire to lead his European Parliament list.
“While the Black Blocs were ransacking Paris, Macron was skiing and Castaner was preparing his night at the club: makes one believe they are competing over despising the people,” tweeted Gilles Lebreton, head of the far-right National Rally in the European Parliament.
Macron still has a cult following among LREM members.
Yet one of Macron’s saving graces could well be those very same detractors. The opposition remains weak. The traditional center-right and center-left parties are struggling to reach double digits in opinion polls, and his only real competition is the far right’s Marine Le Pen, who remains an unpalatable choice for many.
Moreover, the president is bolstered by an extremely loyal party that holds an absolute majority in parliament. Macron still has a cult following among members — 88 percent of party members trust the government to address people’s demands, and 91 percent believe the Great Debate was a success, twice as many as non-LREM supporters, according to a poll by Harris Interactive.
At a recent meeting during which the party presented its Great Debate recommendations, a supporter said Macron “can do no wrong” while her friend said “even the small mistakes he has made, it’s because he is trying.”
On Wednesday, the government was keen to signal that it remains on course. After the weekly Cabinet meeting, spokesman Benjamin Griveaux announced the government is pushing forward with two big reforms, one on unemployment benefits and the other on public sector jobs.
“The president was stupefied by the level of violence on Saturday — it won’t happen again, not only out of respect for citizens, shop owners, tourists, but also out of respect for those who took part in the Great Debate,” the official in his entourage said.
Griveaux said “the next days will be decisive” and that it is no longer possible to allow “rioters” to “deteriorate the image of France abroad.” That message seems to be falling on deaf ears. Yellow Jackets Facebook groups are already calling next Saturday’s protests “Ultimatum 2.”