ANALYSIS: Why the risks for Macron’s re-election bid are mounting

President Emmanuel Macron remains the favourite to win France's next election but six months before the polls he faces the uncomfortable situation of not knowing the identity of his main challenger.

Published: 11 October 2021 10:17 CEST

Emmanuel Macron is projected to win the first round of the upcoming French Presidential election. Photo: Ludovic MARIN / AFP.

As the countdown begins to the first round on April 10th next year the centrist Macron can no longer be sure that the run-off two weeks later will be a repeat of the 2017 duel with far-right leader Marine Le Pen, which he won easily.

Instead, Macron faces a host of uncertainties and a hand of wild cards in a campaign that has already seen startling shifts.

Assumptions have been upended in the last weeks by the surge of far-right TV pundit Eric Zemmour, dubbed a French version of Donald Trump, who threatens – if he decides to stand – to outpoll Le Pen and split the far-right vote.

The traditional right is not even close to settling on a candidate in a process that has caused internal feuding, with heavyweights like former minister Xavier Bertrand, Paris region chief Valerie Pecresse and ex-Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in contention.

The left have their own troubles, with the campaign of the Socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo yet to find momentum and the Greens hurt by a bitter selection contest that failed to unify pragmatists and radicals. Their ratings are below those of extreme-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.

‘Shaken up’

“What worries Macron is he thought there was going to be a rematch with Le Pen and he is no longer certain of that,” said a pro-Macron MP, who asked not to be named.

“It is possible someone could get into the second round with just 15-16 percent of the vote, so we don’t know who is going to come out of the hat,” added a minister, also requesting anonymity.

Current polls project Macron winning the first round with around a quarter of the vote. But if Zemmour fragments the scene further, a score in the high teens may be enough to take a challenger to a run-off.

Pascal Perrineau of Sciences Po university in Paris says the whole political order of the past four years is in the process of being shaken up.

“What a change there has been in the last two weeks,” he told AFP.

Frederic Dabi of opinion pollster Ifop said Le Pen had been “relatively weakened” by the emergence of Zemmour.

He said that with such a fragmented offer, the price of a ticket into the second round “falls automatically”, recalling how Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie shocked the political mainstream by slipping into the second round in 2002 with just 16.8 percent of the vote.

‘Island of stability’

Macron is considered, according to Dabi, “the sole island of stability in a fragmented political landscape” but a candidate of the mainstream right making it into the run-off could spell trouble for the incumbent.

“Polls show that Xavier Bertrand could beat Emmanuel Macron if he makes it to the second round,” said Perrineau.

A win for Macron, who enjoyed a meteoric rise to become France’s youngest president in 2017, would make him the first president since Jacques Chirac to serve two terms, after his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande managed just one mandate.

Victory would give him the chance to tackle pension reform in France, a priority delayed by protests and then the pandemic.

Internationally, he could be the undisputed leader of the EU following the exit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and implement his vision of European strategic autonomy in the face of the United States which he sees as disengaging from the continent.

Calendar: What happens and when in the 2022 French presidential election campaigns

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France has in recent weeks been shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party has accused Attal of not doing enough on security as the anti-immigration party soars ahead of the government coalition in polls for the June 9th election.

Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was killed, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”, calling for “a real surge of authority… to curb violence”.

“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said.

Measures will include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of collège age (11 to 15).

“In the day the place to be is at school, to work and to learn,” said Attal, who was also marking 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn round the government’s fortunes.

Parents needed to take more responsibility, said Attal, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.

OPINION: No, France is not suffering an unprecedented wave of violence

Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”

Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.

Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Macron and Attal face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major debacle that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second mandate up to 2027.

A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed the RN on 32.5 percent with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.