In France, the July 2024 elections had ensured victory for two political forces opposed to Macron, viz. the Rassemblement National and the Nouveau Front Populaire. But Macron had postponed the choice of a Prime Minister until the post-Olympic period, two months later. Now, in September 2024, he has appointed Michel Barnier, his ideological twin, as Prime Minister, without taking into account the new political forces in the National Assembly. Macron is thus in the process of creating a new regime divorcing from the democratic institutions of the crisis-ridden Fifth Republic.
Macron proves to be an autocrat
From the outset of his first term in office, Macron has shown himself to be a new type of French politician with autocratic tendencies. He distinguished himself by his megalomaniac style, calling himself a “Jupiterian President”, which he claimed meant that he was above the parties, but which turns out to mean that he is above all French institutions.
This autocratic approach is first and foremost evident in the way he forms his party and chooses his ministers: almost all of them are newcomers with no political stature, chosen for their inability to overshadow the President and for their obedience. Macron decides alone, surrounded by a handful of advisors. He is a man who refuses to compromise and aims for absolute power.
His inhuman repression of the Yellow Vests, who nevertheless represented a huge section of the French people (60-70% of French people recognized themselves in this movement
) proved that he has no intention of giving in to his people, making him unique in the history of the French Republics since the remote days of the Paris Commune.
Macron is clearly under a monarchical illusion, for his practice of power reveals a man believing himself to be some new Napoleon III, a conspirator-emperor who believes in his own intrinsic legitimacy, Macron traces his political lineage to Napoleon III through Socialist president Mitterrand, the 1968 conspirator, nicknamed “the Sphinx” just as Napoleon III himself and who had been known as “God” for his megalomania. Macron’s “Jupiter” is but the new version of the same idea, both devoted to the EU ideology.
Macron further demonstrates his desire to drastically curtail freedom of expression with the arrest of Telegram’s boss Pavel Durov. At the same time, this is a new scandal, as Macron protected Durov personally.
Macron does not yield to the law. He never stopped to increase infringements of parliamentary rights and introduced a form of government based on exceptional procedures (e.g. Article 49.3 of the Constitution), bypassing the opinion of Parliament. Macron imposes his laws without discussion.
Even De Gaulle gave up power in the face of an unfavourable vote (1968-69). As for Macron, the weaker his authority looks, the more he acts with arrogance in a dangerous headlong rush.
Eurocrat Michel Barnier at the head of a new regime
Barnier’s appointment comes as a general surprise. Everything pointed to a political cohabitation between Macron and a party opposed to his views, in line with French political practice before 2000. But Macron is clinging to power because he knows that the New Popular Front is not in a position to impose its policies on him, as it is only a heterogeneous coalition that he believes he can break up. Hence his choice, which confirms his contempt for elections, a choice of exceptional gravity for French democracy.
Barnier, his new Prime Minister, is a man devoid of popularity like all Macron’s Prime Ministers, but unlike them, he is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and then of European Affairs, who went on to sit on the European Commission for a long time, and who was also involved as Minister of Health in the murky business of medical experiments in Wuhan in 2004.
In this respect, Barnier is an ideological twin of Macron, fanatically Europeanist and renowned for his incessant flip-flops on major issues.
Some commentators point to Barnier’s tough stance on immigration and some apparently sovereignist rhetoric. These electoral stances, which run counter to his own political action within the EU, may be useful for negotiations with the Rassemblement National, but also for eliminating this party’s influence. Barnier’s arrival in power shows that chameleon Macron is determined to win for once over the right and the far-right, in particular by introducing a proportional representation system that is highly favourable to the Rassemblement National.
But above all, choosing Barnier is a declaration of war on Parliament. Macron perfectly echoes the attitude of Duke de Broglie, Mac Mahon’s Prime Minister who kept governing despite electoral defeat, between May and December 1877. This is where the French Republic stands: it has returned to its historical point of departure.
The regime that is emerging is a new form of presidentialist autocracy that has nothing to do with the Fifth Republic’s balance between legislative and executive powers. The “Jupiterian president” now grants himself a truly monarchical authority, with Parliament becoming no more than a consultative body.
At the same time, while everything seemed to point to the Rassemblement National as the main opposition party, it is now the “France insoumise” party that is emerging as the pole of opposition to Macron.
A regime without any legitimacy
For the moment, the Macronist regime remains in a kind of legality. Yet, it has just renounced its ultimate source of political legitimacy.
Indeed, the Macronist regime has never had popular legitimacy. The Yellow Vests rose up as soon as it came into being, and the repression that followed reduced the regime to being able to rely only on a narrow electoral legitimacy, that of the president and parliament. Now, it is not only parliamentary legitimacy that is being totally jeopardized in September 2024, and therefore democracy through legislative control, but even the principle of electoral legitimacy. The result is the breakdown of presidential power itself. No French government has ever been so illegitimate.
Of course, Macron intends to rely on the Eurocratic legitimacy in which he believes, i.e., that he governs “by the grace of the EU treaties”, as part of the gradual establishment of a European federal state of which Macron is the embodiment.
However, Macron is mistaken in two respects. In the first case, that of Eurocracy, Macron is little more than a plenipotentiary delegated from abroad, which is bound to bring him a national revolution because sovereignty over France cannot come from outside. In the case of his monarchical illusion, Macron is certainly alone in believing in it, with a very narrow circle of satellites. Macron is nothing but a parvenu, a snob without any source of personal greatness, and he is moreover accused of high treason and hated by his people, which is incompatible with the establishment of a presidentialist autocracy. In other words, Macronism is tending towards a full tyranny of exercise. Barnier’s appointment looks like the beginning of a coup.
Will Parliament react to this obvious change of regime with a series of motions of censure, or by refusing to give its confidence to the Government? In any case, the process of political exclusion of Parliament has only begun, and the crisis implied can only get worse. Macron is thus ushering in an era of highly violent conflict that is now freed from the democratic and institutional straitjacket – in other words, he has just sown a French revolution against a presidentialist autocrat.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
