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The French president’s time in office has been beset by crises. As a deep post-coronavirus recession looms, the biggest one is yet to come
The coronavirus pandemic inevitably tore up the best-laid plans of prime ministers and presidents, shredding carefully assembled lists of priorities and timetables. For the French president, Emmanuel Macron, however, government as crisis management came as nothing new.
Since entering the Élysée in 2017, Mr Macron has spent a large part of his presidency putting out fires, some of them real ones. The sudden emergence nearly two years ago of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, in protest at a rise in fuel tax, saw demonstrations in French cities of a type and scale that drew comparisons with 1968. A subsequent wave of strikes in response to planned pension reforms – a traditionally neuralgic issue in French politics – brought Paris to a virtual standstill during much of December and January. Buffeted by events, loathed by the hard left and the hard right, and criticised across the board for a perceived haughtiness in style, Mr Macron has found it impossible to become the smooth, technocratic president he aspired to be.
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