Macron unveils agenda for second term

French President Emmanuel Macron, a business-friendly former investment-banker and founder of the centrist La Republique en Marche party, is bidding for a second term after his promising victory in 2017 in the presidential election in May. Macron seems to have regained his support base through the efforts he made in the Ukraine war – he visited Moscow last month to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin – and he seems to have had some success on the economic front.

The unemployment rate is down and there is growth. The unemployment rate has come down to 7.4 per cent, the best in 15 years, and economic growth last year touched a 52-year high at 7 per cent. But he feels that it is not enough, and more needs to be done, to show that he needs the second term to complete the work he has set out to do. He said at the press conference on Thursday, “The rate of unemployment is at its lowest level in 15 years, the youth unemployment rate is at its lowest for 40 years…none of these results can be considered enough.” And it looks like that he will win the first round on April 10 and he would be comfortably placed for the final run-off on April 24 as his voter support grows to 31 per cent from the 25 per cent last month.

There are quite a few things that Macron is promising if he wins the second term. He plans to increase the retirement age from 62 to 63, loosen labour laws that will make hiring and firing easier, cut taxes by 15 billion euros every year, make unemployment benefits conditional on community work and reform unemployment insurance so that people get back to work. He feels that it is normal for the country to work more. “It’s quite normal, especially when you consider the state of public coffers, that we work more.” Macron has generally been accused of being a rich man’s president, but he now promises more subsidies for single mothers and inheritance tax breaks for those who leave money for grandchildren.

But the ambitious part of his agenda for his second term lies in he fact that he wants to make France self-sufficient in industry and agriculture, by investing more in nuclear reactors to move away from dependence on fossil fuels. He is also sanguine about making France the ‘start-up nation’ in Europe to show that France is ahead of the other two big economies in Europe – Germany and the Netherlands.

And like many of his predecessors, Macron is keen to move away from American influence in new technologies like information technology. He wants a French version of Facebook’s ‘Metaverse’. He does not want France to be standing in the shadow of American technology.

And he does not want to lose his centre-right position as he is likely to face challenge from the far-right. He wants to adopt a tough position on law and order, put more police persons on the streets, and tighten the asylum rules expelling people whose asylum applications have been rejected. After sporadic incidents of terrorist incidents last year, Macron had put many of the religious organisations suspected of terrorist links on the radar. And he raised concern in the liberal circles about growing intolerance in French society.

But Macron has no hesitation in flaunting his centre-right credentials. He wants a strong, self-sufficient France, whose economy should emerge as the top performer in Europe. But his ambitious agenda will not just depend on his success in the presidential contest, but it also requires that his party wins enough seats in the parliamentary elections.