Macron’s win must take France forward

The new French president won by a decisive margin. But does he have a strong mandate?

French president-elect Emmanuel Macron celebrates after winning the second round of the French presidential elections. Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA

Given how bruising the election campaign was, Emmanuel Macron could perhaps be forgiven for his subdued victory speech. The youthful energy on display on the campaign trail, which had so energised supporters, was gone, replaced with a more sober, perhaps more presidential, style.

He was ready, he said, to face the challenges of the time: Europe’s recovery; Terrorism; The digital revolution. He would defend France, Europe and – in a message that will infuriate supporters of Marine Le Pen and indeed many across Europe – “the common destiny the peoples of our continent have given themselves”.

Music to the ears of Brussels, Berlin and European Union supporters, if not to all French citizens. Finally, in an era of the Brexiting Theresa May in Britain and the technocratic Angela Merkel in Germany, here was someone who would explicitly champion the European Union – and as one of the founding members of the club, no less.

So Mr Macron’s election victory can certainly be read as an endorsement of the European project. It can also be read as a repudiation of the Front National’s vision. His decisive victory over Ms Le Pen will please many across the world, who feared – after Brexit and then the election of Donald Trump – that populism would claim another western democracy. Mr Macron stopped that.

Beyond that, however, Mr Macron should be wary of claiming too big a mandate. He said many things on the campaign trail. But, faced with the monster that the French elite saw in Ms Le Pen and her party, many will have seen him as the lesser of two evils. Whether he can sustain such popularity in government is a considerable unknown.

After all, Mr Macron, elected at 39, in the first election he has ever contested, does not even have a political party backing him. His grouping, En Marche, has no presence in the French National Assembly. When voting for that legislature takes place next month, Mr Macron could find himself in a coalition. Then the pledges he has made to lower unemployment and cut public spending could rapidly unravel.

Beyond France, viewed from the Middle East, Mr Macron’s victory is certainly welcome. He has expressed the right sentiments over France’s colonial history – he went to Algeria and called France’s role there a “crime against humanity”.

He has also taken a more nuanced approach to extremism, much of which in France has been “home-grown”. France has lost 230 people to attacks by Islamist-linked militants since 2015. Yet despite being goaded by Ms Le Pen as “indulgent” on extremism, Mr Macron refused to use the same forceful language that too many in the West utilise. He would lead a fight against terrorism, he said, but warned that militants wanted to lead France into the “trap” of an internal civil war. In past statements he has noted that terrorism would remain “a fact of daily life”.

France’s involvement in the Middle East, and with the UAE specifically, matters. It has fought against ISIL in Iraq and in west Africa. It remains a crucial trading partner with this country and there are long-standing cultural ties. So a president as internationally minded as Mr Macron will doubtless recognise the value in continuing and deepening those alliances. Whether he chooses to get France involved in some of the other issues facing the Middle East – the future of Syria, the continuing occupation of Palestine, the instability in Libya – is yet to be seen. On the campaign trail, he did not speak much about foreign policy – and France certainly has enough of its own domestic issues.

It is those that will occupy the youthful Mr Macron. There are many forces pulling him back, but there are still many who wish him to take France, as his own campaign had it, forward.