Ballot in France: Emmanuel Macron, a very different man from the one who won in 2017

The Emmanuel Macron who is seeking a second term as French president this Sunday is very different from the one who in 2017 seduced the country as a candidate almost arrived from outside politics to settle in the Elysee.

The one who was then the youngest man (there have been no women presidents) to reach the head of state in 2017 at 39 years old, lost a good part of his political capital in his eventful five-year term in the Elysee.

A serious domestic crisis (the “yellow vest” protests) and two other global ones (the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine) have weighed heavily on a mandate in which controversies did not cease.

Far away seems to have been the politician with a youthful and attractive appearance, who seduced the French and went from being almost unknown to occupying the Head of State.

If then Macron promised a “revolution” with very ambitious transformations, now he is content to continue the course he has taken, with reforms such as pensions and much more moderate objectives and tone.

Experience in the face of crises

His current figure is an experienced technocrat who proposes to continue piloting the country with a sure hand, very different from the newcomer without a party who conquered the political skies in 2017.

“There will be more crises” and when the French arrive “they will already have a certain idea of ​​the way I am going to act,” Macron said in the presentation of his program, a more technical than audacious compendium of proposals.

True to its goal open a third way between conservatives and socialistscombined right-wing measures (such as the abolition of the wealth tax or the promise to raise the retirement age) with left-wing ones (such as abundant subsidies for the layers most sensitive to increases in energy prices or basic products ).

But his most notable measure was, possibly, the “whatever it takes” strategy by which the State injected huge amounts of money to support the companies forced to close during the 2020/21 sanitary confinements and pay the salaries of those who did not they could work.

A defender of the fight against climate change and of Ukraine after the invasion, Macron has exercised important leadership both in the European Union (EU) and globally, seeking to maintain France’s outstanding world position.

In the EU, it has been the complement of Angela Merkel in the Franco-German axis and, after the change of government in Germany, it assumed a leading role, taking advantage of the foreign inexperience of the new German head of government, Olaf Scholz.

your trajectory

The son of doctors born in Amiens (north) although with roots in the south, Macron acknowledges his predilection for the Pyrenees, since his maternal grandmother was from a town near the Spanish community of Aragon.

He was trained, like so many other French leaders, at the National School of Administration (ENA), a veritable incubator for the French ruling class, an institution as praised for its quality as reviled for its alleged elitism of its graduates.

After debuting in the Administration as a tax inspector, in 2008 he joined the Rothschild business bank, of which he was already a partner two years later.

From there he returned to the public sector, but at a much higher level. He was first deputy general secretary of the Elysee and then economy minister (2014) with socialist president François Hollande, a position he left two years later to launch his assault on the presidency.

Create a match for you (La República en Marcha, LREM) to win the Legislative power and achieved an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

But the formation, lacking territorial implantation, does not control the Senate.

Confronted in a recent interview with a photograph of when he arrived at the Elysee, Macron, with his temples lightened by the gray hair left behind by the man who captivated France in 2017, acknowledged in a melancholy voice: “I’m afraid I’ve changed and aged a bit . I am aware”.

Source: EFE

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