Translated material
Macron: Who is he?
Macron began to try on the laurels of the new owner of the Elysee Palace long before the second round of the presidential election, which will be held on May 7. And certainly - immediately after the first round, held on April 23, according to the results of which he was almost 3% ahead of his closest competitor, the leader of the far-right National Front Marine Le Pen: 24.1% against 21.3% (April 24 Le Pen temporarily left the post of chairman of the party. - NT).
Until now, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was elected in 1974 to the highest state post at the age of 48, was considered the youngest president of France. Macron was called an upstart and a media bubble that is about to burst, but he not only defeated the nationalist Le Pen, but also did not let candidates from the country's two main political forces, the Socialist Party and the Republicans, into the second round.
"New Kennedy"
Unlike Le Pen, Macron's electorate is made up of residents of the capital and big cities. In contrast to the protectionist and isolationist program of the leader of the National Front, Macron advocates increased competition, equal chances and an open world. In foreign policy, Macron is a staunch Euro-antlantist (a supporter of cooperation with the United States, maintaining France's membership in NATO and the EU). He criticizes the Kremlin's policies in Syria and Ukraine. And, apparently, as a result, his headquarters and special services throughout the election campaign have been talking about incessant hacker attacks, allegedly coordinated from Moscow.
Emmanuel Macron came to the polling station on the day of the first round of elections with his wife Brigitte Tronier, France, Le Touquet, April 23, 2017
Emmanuel Macron, although he was a member of the Socialist Party for some time, and later worked in the government of the Socialists, refuses to identify himself with any of the political camps traditional for France. “The divide today is between conservatives and progressives, not between right and left,” he said. The British press compares him to Tony Blair, who abandoned the division into right and left and offered society a "third way". American commentators see him as "a new Kennedy capable of stemming the tide of populism."
Critics call Macron Monsieur "And at the same time" - for his favorite construction when answering questions, when a centrist politician first defends one position, then argues in favor of the opposite, so it is difficult to understand his real opinion. Philosopher Michel Elchaninoff, a descendant of white emigrants, author of the books “In the Head of Vladimir Putin” and “In the Head of Marine Le Pen”, in a column for Le Point magazine calls Macron a “high school student” who tries to be right, succeed in everything, please everyone.
Childhood. Adolescence. champs elysees
The personal life of the candidate is also widely discussed. About a year ago, there were rumors about the homosexuality of Emmanuel Macron and that he was allegedly dating the head of Radio France, Mathieu Galle. Macron did not comment on them for a long time, explaining this by his unwillingness to encourage gossip. The candidate's headquarters claimed that these rumors were being spread by Russian state-run media outlets RT and Sputnik News. Founder of the Forward! on the recommendation of his advisers, he issued an unequivocal rebuttal only when he officially entered the presidential race. The French tabloids, which initially picked up the "hot news", later removed the publications.
But the tabloid press is still full of family photos of Emmanuel and his wife Brigitte. The former school teacher of French language and literature, who became the wife of a politician in 2007, played an active role throughout her husband's presidential campaign: she helped write speeches, accompanied him on election trips, and advised on staff appointments at headquarters. Emmanuel fell in love with Brigitte when he was in high school with her in Amiens. She is 24 years older than him, was married at the time and already had three children. Her eldest daughter was Macron's classmate. Having learned about the relationship of their son with the teacher, the parents sent Emmanuel to finish school in Paris.
Macron received a classic elite education - the prestigious Henri IV Lyceum in Paris, the Sciences-Po Higher School of Political Sciences and, finally, the master's degree from the ENA National School of Administration, through which almost all French presidents and most government officials have passed. After graduating, Macron worked for four years as an inspector at the Ministry of Economy, after which he became an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque.
The French media first started talking about Macron in August 2014, when at the age of 36 he was unexpectedly appointed to one of the key posts - the Minister of Economy - in the government of Manuel Valls. However, Macron did not end up in the government by accident. He became an economic adviser to François Hollande during his election campaign in 2011. Since 2012, he has worked at the Elysee Palace and accompanied the president on foreign trips, helping to negotiate on economic issues.
Just a few months after his appointment, the young minister submitted to the government a package of bills to liberalize certain sectors of the economy. The Macron Law, as the press would call these initiatives, included allowing shops to open on Sundays, opening intercity bus routes in France, and other measures aimed at stimulating economic growth and competition.
Macron's proposals provoked a flurry of criticism and a wave of demonstrations, especially among the French left. The right also did not support the bill being carried out by the Socialist Party. In the French satirical program Guignoles de l'info (from which the Dolls that aired on NTV were copied), Macron was then portrayed as a capricious little child patronized by big business and President Hollande.
However, Prime Minister Manuel Valls got the law passed without debate, putting it to a vote in parliament along with a vote of confidence in the government. The law was passed on the first anniversary of Macron's tenure as minister, in August 2015. Exactly one year later, in August 2016, Macron resigned, having created his own political movement, En marche! ("Forward!").
Gifts from competitors
Macron started his presidential campaign from scratch, having neither political resources nor experience in political struggle. Nobody took him seriously. Elections 2017 for Macron is the first election campaign in his life. For French politics, a presidential candidate who has not previously participated in any, even municipal, elections is a precedent.
However, in addition to the obvious advantages: charisma, determination, the personification of novelty in politics, Macron owes much of his success to the failures of his competitors.
Back in the fall of 2016, every single French political scientist and sociologist predicted a victory in the presidential election for the “veteran” of the right-wing Republican party, Allen Juppe, the former prime minister, the center-right seemed to be an ideal consensual presidential candidate. Against his background, the young and inexperienced Macron had no chance of winning. However, the November primaries of the "Republicans" presented the first surprise in this presidential campaign, and instead of Juppe, Francois Fillon became the right-wing candidate, who also positioned himself from the first days as a no-alternative option for France. But less than two months later, Fillon's rating collapsed after a corruption scandal involving fictitious employment of his family members. The remaining months before the election, Fillon spent justifying himself before the investigators, and in the first round he competed only for third place with the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Another gift to Macron was presented by the French left, having voted in the primaries of the Socialist Party not for the left-liberal ex-Prime Minister Waltz, who was able to pull a significant number of votes from Macron, but for the “left of the left” - the socialist Benoit Amon, whom even members of his own party considered too radical and became one after another, run across to Macron's camp.
Finally, the final stage on Macron's victorious path to the Elysee Palace was the support from the leader of the centrist Democratic Movement Party Francois Bayrou, who refused to run for the third time in the presidential election. From that moment on, for moderate French voters, who fear the coming to power of radicals of both the right and the left, there was simply no other candidate but Macron.
IMF director Christine Lagarde, according to some reports, is dreaming of heading the new French government. During the election campaign, she repeatedly expressed support for Macron, advertising him primarily on the other side of the Atlantic.
What's next?
The first test for the new president of France will be the parliamentary elections, which will be held a month after the presidential elections: June 11 and 18. Based on their results, it will become clear whether the new owner of the Elysee Palace will have a parliamentary majority that will allow him to appoint a government and implement election promises, or he will have to lead the country for five years in conditions of so-called cohabitation, when the parliamentary majority is in opposition to the president and the head of state, in order to approve the composition of the government, must compromise with the National Assembly.
According to sources close to Macron's headquarters, centrist leader Francois Bayrou, who many call the future prime minister, can count on a place in the new government. However, Bayrou has many competitors. Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund, dreams of heading the government, according to L'Obs magazine. During the election campaign, she repeatedly expressed support for the founder of the Forward! movement, advertising him primarily on the other side of the Atlantic.
The most popular member of the current government, the permanent head of the Defense Ministry, Jean-Yves Le Drian, should not be left without a portfolio in the new cabinet. The 69-year-old politician was the first of the current ministers to express support for Macron and expects to keep his post after the elections. Dominique de Villepin, Prime Minister of the era of Jacques Chirac, is also named among the possible candidates for the new government. According to L'Obs, de Villepin himself, who supported Macron before the first round, hopes to get the post of foreign minister.
However, all of the listed candidates have already passed through more than one government and do not fit well into the course of change announced before the elections. Macron himself refuses to reveal any details about future appointments before the end of the elections. The only plans he shared with journalists is the desire to maintain gender parity and not to inflate the staff of ministers.