Emmanuel Macron: Emmanuel Macron has been re-elected as France’s president for a second term, making him the first person to do so since 2002.
His triumph over right-wing competitor Marine Le Pen by a reasonably comfortable margin of 58.5 percent to 41.5 percent will be met with a big sigh of relief in France’s most important allies’ capital cities, particularly in Brussels, the European Union, and NATO’s headquarters.
While Macron was always the favorite to win this election, many observers saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as highlighting the necessity for Western unity in the face of belligerent aggression.
Emmanuel Macron Early Life
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (born December 21, 1977) is a French politician who has been the country’s president since May 14, 2017.
Macron was born in Amiens and studied philosophy at Paris Nanterre University before going on to Sciences Po to get a master’s degree in public affairs and graduating from the École Nationale administration in 2004.
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He began his career as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances before joining Rothschild & Co. as an investment banker.
Emmanuel Macron Personal Life
Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux, a former La Providence High School teacher in Amiens who is 24 years older. They met while he was a 15-year-old student and she was a 39-year-old teacher during a drama workshop she was delivering, but they didn’t become a couple until he was 18.
His parents attempted to keep the couple apart by sending him to Paris to finish his senior year of high school, believing that his age rendered the connection unsuitable. However, after Macron graduated, the couple reunited and married in 2007.
He has no children of his own, whereas she has three from a previous marriage. Trogneux’s role in Macron‘s 2017 presidential campaign has been hailed as crucial, with close Macron friends claiming that Trogneux helped Macron acquire abilities like public speaking.
Emmanuel Macron Political Career
President François Hollande named Macron as deputy secretary-general shortly after his election in May 2012, making him one of Hollande’s top advisers. In August 2014, Prime Minister Manuel Valls named him to the French cabinet as Minister of the Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs.
Macron championed a number of business-friendly policies while in this position. In August 2016, he resigned from the ministry and began campaigning for the 2017 French presidential election. Despite having been in the Socialist Party from 2006 to 2009, Macron ran for president under the banner of En Marche!, a centrist and pro-European political movement he created in April 2016.
Macron topped the ballot in the first round of voting, thanks in part to the Fillon incident, and was elected President of France on May 7, 2017, with 66.1 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Marine Le Pen. Macron became the youngest president in French history at the age of 39.
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Macron‘s party renamed La République En Marche (LREM), won a majority in the National Assembly in the 2017 French legislative election the following month. He named Édouard Philippe as Prime Minister until his resignation in 2020, after which he named Jean Castex as Prime Minister.
In the 2022 presidential election, Macron defeated Le Pen for a second term, becoming the first French presidential candidate to win re-election since 2002.
Domestic and Foreign Policy
Macron has supervised several labor legislation, tax, and pension reforms, as well as a renewable energy transition, during his administration.
The 2018 yellow vest protests and other rallies culminated in opposition to his domestic measures, particularly a proposed gasoline tax. He has been in charge of France’s continuing COVID-19 pandemic response and vaccination rollout since 2020.
He argued for European Union reforms and negotiated bilateral treaties with Italy and Germany in foreign policy.
He also supervised a conflict with Australia and the US over the AUKUS security treaty, as well as French involvement in the Syrian civil war and participation in the international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Emmanuel Macron Wins 2nd Term Presidential Election
Emmanuel Macron has been re-elected as France’s president for a second term, making him the first person to do so since 2002.
His triumph over right-wing competitor Marine Le Pen by a reasonably comfortable margin of 58.5 percent to 41.5 percent will be met with a big sigh of relief in France’s most important allies’ capital cities, particularly in Brussels, the European Union and NATO’s headquarters.
While Macron was always the favorite to win this election, many observers saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as highlighting the necessity for Western unity in the face of belligerent aggression.
This solidarity has remained more or less intact among NATO members and the EU during the crisis, but authorities were concerned that a Le Pen triumph would jeopardize the trans-Atlantic partnership.
Le Pen appears to have been created with the intention of being the last person in the Western alliance to control a country as important as France.
France is a member of NATO, the European Union, and the Group of Seven. It is a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Despite its deep roots in these pillars of the Western system, France has always preferred an independent foreign policy, allowing it to operate as a go-between for the US-led Western order and countries like Iran, China, and Russia.
Because of Le Pen‘s historical ties to Russia, her skepticism of NATO, and her hostility toward the EU, her win would have shaken cages all over the world.
However, if the estimates are true, the magnitude of Macron’s triumph tonight would mean that many French friends’ celebrations will be cut short. Macron’s margin of victory is now significantly less than it was in 2017 when he easily defeated Le Pen with 66 percent of the vote.
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Despite the fact that beating the far-right for the second election is a huge success for Macron, France’s friends will be acutely aware that over 42% of French voters backed someone who opposes so much of what they believe in.
Nowhere will this be felt more sharply than among NATO and EU leadership.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has put NATO‘s cohesiveness to the test for the first time in years. While some of Macron’s choices throughout the crisis drew criticism, NATO has mainly remained on the same page.
Few predicted that Le Pen’s historical friendship with Putin, as well as his contempt for NATO, would not be an issue not just in NATO, but also at the UN Security Council.
It’s also worth mentioning that, while Putin’s favored candidate did not win the presidency, Le Pen will remain a powerful figure in France with a large following. While her loss means France’s most antagonistic attitude toward Putin’s invasion will remain, Russia has a powerful disruptor in a key European country who will likely continue to stir divisions in France and elsewhere.