Europe's prestige erodes amidst Macron's double standards Credibility crisis

The British newspaper The Spectator has published an article by Gavin Mortimer on the political instability in France. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

It was way back in the first week of July that the French went to the polls to elect a new government. Fifty-nine days later and there is no new government and it’s anyone’s guess who will become the fifth prime minister to serve under Emmanuel Macron. As one left-wing politician, Mathilde Panot, quipped on Monday (September 2): "If Macron could nominate himself, he would."

In the parliamentary election, Macron’s Renaissance party finished third, receiving 6.3 million votes. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the biggest slice of the popular vote with 10.1 million votes, followed by the left-wing New Popular Front coalition with seven million. This coalition nevertheless took the most seats in the National Assembly, 193, 27 more than Macron’s centrist bloc. The National Rally increased its seats from 88 to 126 to become the single biggest party in parliament. In other words, Macron was the big loser from the election.

If the president was a man of his word he would have resigned in the wake of his defeat. In 2019, he scolded some of his predecessors in the Elysee for not accepting the political consequences of an electoral defeat.

"The president of the Republic should not be able to stay (in office) if he had a real disavowal in terms of a majority," said Macron during a debate with a group of French intellectuals who had been invited to the Elysee to discuss the Yellow Vest social crisis.

Macron has suffered two such disavowals in the last two years. In the 2022 parliamentary elections, his party forfeited their absolute majority in the National Assembly after losing 105 seats. In July, they lost a further 95 seats.

Not only has Macron reneged on his 2019 declaration, but has refused to recognise that the left-wing coalition won the most seats.

He rejected out of hand their candidate – Lucie Castets – as prime minister, insisting that he will have the final say. This does not contravene the constitution but it does surely challenge the democratic legitimacy of the election result.

In choosing who will be his prime minister – expected to be a centrist – Macron has excluded Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (and their allies, a breakaway splinter of the Republicans) and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise from discussions. Between them, these parties won 45 per cent of the popular vote.

On Tuesday (September 3), La France Insoumise launched impeachment proceedings against Macron, accusing him of attempting an "anti-democratic power grab".

One can’t help but think that if France was a South American or central African country, the EU would have by now issued a statement calling on the president to "ensure that the will of the people expressed at the ballot box is respected."

Macron has shown scant respect for the will of the people, the majority of whom voted against his ruling party. As the distinguished philosopher Michel Onfray put it at the weekend, Macron is running France as a "cool dictatorship", holding both parliament and the people in contempt.

In a communiqué last week, Macron justified his contortions by claiming it was for the good of the country as he sought "institutional stability".

Is that how democracy now works? If an election result threatens a country’s "institutional stability", in the opinion of the president or prime minister, then they can ignore the will of the people?

France has previous in this respect. When the electorate voted in a 2005 referendum not to endorse the EU Constitution, parliament ignored the result and ratified the constitution as the repackaged Lisbon Treaty. A similar subversion of democracy was attempted in Britain after the Brexit vote in 2016; it took years of bitter struggle before a watered down version of Brexit was achieved.

Olaf Scholz is the latest European leader to have an electoral hissy fit. Following Alternative für Deutschland’s victory in Thuringia’s state election on Sunday (September 1), the German chancellor demanded that ‘all democratic parties…form stable governments without right-wing extremists’.

It’s a peculiar expression of democracy to agitate for the winners of a free and open election to be ostracised. It leads one to wonder if Scholz understands how democracy works. Macron and Scholz, Europe’s two most important leaders, seem determined to turn a blind eye to voters. One reason for Europe’s crumbling prestige around the world is that countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas have seen through the continent’s leaders’ hypocrisy, sanctimony and their shameless double standards. If events of this summer are anything to go on, it’s hard to blame them.