Paris Emmanuel Macron’s candidacy was an open secret: the French President had already declared at the beginning of the year that he was “in the mood” for a second term. However, he continued to postpone the official announcement because of the escalation in Ukraine.
Macron has now explained himself in a letter to the French, which was printed in the country’s regional newspapers on Friday and which became public on Thursday evening. “I ask for your confidence for a new mandate as President of the Republic,” he writes. “I am a candidate to defend our values, which are threatened by the turmoil of the world.”
Macron’s announcement comes just over a month before the first round of voting on April 10 – and comes at the last moment. Because the presidential candidates must make their ambitions public by Friday evening at 6 p.m. and submit a list of at least 500 declarations of support from mayors, MPs and other officials.
War in Ukraine changes the election campaign
The war in Ukraine is disrupting the French election campaign. Macron initially refrains from large rallies. Plans for a campaign start with thousands of supporters this Saturday in Marseille were canceled after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Of course I won’t be able to campaign as I would have liked because of the circumstances,” he writes in his letter.
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The war and its consequences for Europe are also likely to overshadow the political debate in the weeks leading up to the elections in France. Polls indicate that Macron could benefit from his role as head of state in times of war: In the most recent polls, he rose by two to three percentage points and could therefore count on 28 percent of the vote in the first ballot.
“I am a candidate to defend our values, which are threatened by the turmoil of the world,” Macron wrote to the French.
(Photo: Reuters)
His challengers, on the other hand, have a problem with Russia – above all Marine Le Pen, who, according to surveys, currently has the best chance of taking part in a runoff against Macron. The right-wing populist, who lost to Macron in the second round of voting in 2017, is said to have hastily withdrawn 1.2 million copies of an election campaign brochure. Her party denies that. There she was seen smiling in a photo with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she visited in the Kremlin a few years ago.
The links between Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Russia have always raised questions in France. In 2014, a Russian bank gave the party, which at the time still operated under the name Front National, a loan of around nine million euros. Her father and party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen was a welcome guest in Moscow.
Like Le Pen, right-wing nationalist Éric Zemmour has shown a great deal of understanding in recent weeks for alleged Russian security concerns towards the West, even though both ultimately condemned Putin’s war in Ukraine. A similarly ambivalent attitude towards Moscow was taken by left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is currently the only representative of the fragmented left-wing camp to top ten percent in the polls.
Valérie Pécresse, the conservative-bourgeois Republican candidate, like Macron, takes a tough stance on Putin and supports EU sanctions. However, her party colleague François Fillon, former Prime Minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy and failed Republican candidate in the 2017 election, caused an image problem: Fillon reluctantly parted from his supervisory board mandates at the Russian petrochemical group Sibur and the Russian oil company Sarubezhneft.
Macron’s government clears up the Corona debate
The heated debate about immigration, Islam in France and national identity, which, among other things, caused Zemmour’s unexpected rise to power, seems to be collapsing. The controversies surrounding Macron’s tenure, such as the yellow vest protests against high petrol prices or the demonstrations against vaccination rules during the pandemic, are being pushed into the background in view of the risk of war.
Shortly before the president’s official candidacy, his government took the wind out of the sails of the corona critics anyway: Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday that the 2G rule would be suspended from March 14 due to the more relaxed situation in the pandemic.
A vocal minority took to the streets for months against the “health pass” that the French had to show in many areas of public life. The mask requirement should also fall practically everywhere from the middle of the month – with the exception of public transport.
In the letter, Macron also tried to highlight the economic record of his tenure. “Thanks to the reforms undertaken, our industry has created jobs for the first time and unemployment is at its lowest level in 15 years,” he wrote. He wants to continue on this path.
“There is no independence without economic strength,” Macron wrote. The tax burden on labor and production must be reduced further, investments in innovation and research must be increased. This is the only way that “our social model” can be preserved.
Campaign team waiting for starting signal
Macron has had the required number of 500 supporters for weeks. The parties of Macron’s center alliance had already gathered in Paris at the end of November, including of course the President’s “La République en Marche”. Under the name “Ensemble Citoyens!” (“Citizens, together!”), they set the goal of winning the majority again in the election year.
Concerned about the utmost discretion, confidants of the president prepared the campaign in a building next to the party headquarters of “En Marche” in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. The campaign team was just waiting for the starting signal.
At the end of January, it had already put an election campaign page on the Internet with the slogan “Avec vous” (“With you”). There, citizens report on their everyday worries and how they have benefited from the politics of the past few years. A sheep farmer, a nurse, and a bartender have their say in the videos. Only pictures and the name of Emmanuel Macron did not appear at first.
The opposition lost patience and accused Macron of campaigning at state expense. The President, on the other hand, continued the wait-and-see attitude with reference to his official duties. First he led the fight against the omicron wave in the pandemic, then he tried to mediate in the Ukraine crisis. In view of the escalation with the Russian war of aggression, Macron sees his assessment confirmed that he would concentrate on his duties as president “until the last quarter of an hour”.
More: Macron’s TV speech: “The coming days will be very difficult”