Emmanuel Macron’s “New Way”

Strong State Instead of Reforms

In his first government statement on 15 July 2020, France’s new prime minister, Jean Castex, tried to show how France could recover “from one of the most seri­ous health crises it has ever experienced”: A dras­tic rise in unemployment should be prevented and the economy should be modernised to bring it out of the crisis.

France has been one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. By the end of August 2020, more than 30,500 people had died from Covid-19, although the toughest lockdown in the EU prevented the virus from spreading uncontrollably. How­ever, the number of new infections is now rising significantly. The 55-day curfew im­posed in spring 2020 (from 16 March to 11 May 2020) led to a dramatic collapse of the French economy. In the second quarter of 2020, the country’s economic performance dropped 13.8% from the previous quarter, even coming in below the euro area average (‑12.1%). For autumn, the government ex­pects a 20% increase in corporate insolven­cies: 60,000 companies are about to go out of business. The consequences for the labour market are dramatic: In April, 10.8 million people – almost a third of the 30,455 million employed (2019 figure) – were on short-time work. In September, 800,000 school leavers were coming onto the labour market – most of them with no job prospects. By spring 2021, the govern­ment estimates that about 1 million jobs will be lost, and the unemployment rate is predicted to reach 11.5% next year.

The government in Paris is doing everything in its power to mitigate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. Under Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, it had provided €463 billion in assistance to employees, the self-employed, and busi­nesses – of which €58 billion was in the form of budgetary support and €401 billion in the form of guarantees. The additional financial support of almost €100 billion announced by Prime Minister Castex will continue to finance short-time work, create apprenticeships, and promote vocational training. Strategic industries will receive grants to transfer skills back to France in strategic sectors and reduce dependence on foreign countries. These measures will not be financed through tax increases but with EU money (€50.6 billion from the EU Recon­struction Fund) and a “Covid-19 debt” from the state. The latter will bring France’s public deficit to a record €2,438.5 billion and raise the debt level to more than 121% of GDP. Finally, the president has declared that he still wants to implement the contro­versial pension reform, but he has had to make considerable concessions.

Macron’s new approach thus places civic and social peace at the centre of his actions. The president wants to counteract a pos­sible social uprising with a “strong state” policy. In return, he is prepared to abandon the budgetary discipline that has shaped his policy for the last three years.

Citizen Participation Instead of Disenchantment with Politics

Last but not least, President Macron’s new way aims at reducing the level of discontent with the political elite. This dissatisfaction has put an end to the two-party system that has brought stability to the country for more than 40 years. It is increasingly turn­ing elections into a game of Vabanque: In the first round of the 2017 presidential elec­tions, a good half of those eligible to vote cast their ballots for the parties at the ex­tremes of the political spectrum (both left and right). In 2020, low turnout in the local elections helped the Green Party to succeed in cities with more than 100,000 inhabit­ants.

This is where the president is taking the greatest risk. To counteract the public’s dis­enchantment with politics, he must relin­quish power. The state initially reacted to the Yellow Vests protests with administra­tive reforms. However, the geographical distribution of public services – health care facilities, access to digital infrastructure, and public services – is still being decided in Paris. The problem is that equal stand­ards of living are being guaranteed to a soci­ety and economy that are not very flexible. In mid-June 2020, President Macron said once again that the state needed to be fun­damentally reorganised; not everything could be decided in Paris. He has now given his new government the task of negotiating the transfer of powers with regional repre­sentatives and modernising public adminis­tration.

Following the protests of the Yellow Vests, Macron finally opted for more citizen participation – assemblies, and also the extended possibility of referenda – but without any binding or direct influence on decision-making processes. The low turnout in the 2020 local elections seems to have prompted Macron to give more say to the citizens’ assemblies. The day after these elec­tions, he decided that the National Assembly should turn 147 of the 150 pro­posals of the “Citizens’ Convention on Climate” into legis­lative proposals. Since 4 October 2019, 150 randomly selected citizens had drawn up proposals for a “profound change in society” to counteract climate change. The fact that these proposals are now to become law is a step in the direction of the democ­rati­sation of France. With this step, how­ever, the president is also trying to make an offer to those voters he recently lost to the Greens. The Green electorate in 2020 is almost identical to the one that voted for Macron in 2017: urban, young, educated, well-paid, and pro-European. But above all, they want a more cosmopolitan France.