Macron’s ‘Revolution’ Faces a Reckoning

Macron’s ‘Revolution’ Faces a Reckoning

International and Arab News

Could the re-election campaign of France’s President Emmanuel Macron be any less inspiring?

As French voters go to the polls on April 10 for the first of two voting rounds, gone is the enthusiasm or interest in the election of 2017, when Macron came to power as the youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte, with a new party promising to sweep out the establishment, knock out a rising Europhobic far right and bring about a liberal “revolution.”

Yet this year the stakes for France, Europe and the world are even higher in many ways. With Germany’s new coalition government still finding its footing after the Angela Merkel era, the European Union’s second biggest economy and only nuclear power could well be leading the continent’s response to a high Covid-19 debt load, a brutal war on Europe’s doorstep and a costly shift away from fossil fuels.

It’s not just the combination of pandemic and war that is smothering excitement on the campaign trail. Macron has changed his tune — the former disruptor is being cast as protector-in-chief by an entourage seeking to keep him above the fray. Wags have named it the “eiderdown” plan: sleepy, safe and padded with budget giveaways. Macron’s