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A poor choice of words: 4 times Emmanuel Macron shocked France in 2023

Despite his suave image, French President Emmanuel Macron is not immune to a verbal blunder. Here is a selection of throwaway phrases that drew him criticism over the past year.

A poor choice of words: 4 times Emmanuel Macron shocked France in 2023
French President Emmanuel Macron has never shied away from controversy. (Photo by MOHAMMED BADRA / POOL / AFP)

Since first winning the presidency in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has earned a reputation for his use of arrogant, condescending and out-of-touch language.

Who could forget the time he expressed his wish to emmerder (“piss off”) those who hadn’t didn’t want to get vaccinated against Covid-19; the times he has referred to his own countrymen as Gaulois réfractaires (“Gauls who are resistant to change”), fainéants (“lazy people”) and cyniques (“cynics”); or when he said protestors should go to work instead of trying to foutre le bordel (“fuck up the brothel”). 

READ MORE: A history of French presidential swearing

There is little sign that the French President is changing his ways. Here are four of his most divisive utterings of the past 12 months. 

  • Who could have predicted the climate crisis?

Admittedly, this is a slightly paraphrased version of the New Year’s Eve address that Macron sent to the nation last year. But in the popular imagination, it was enough to earn him derision. 

The actual words were as follows:

Qui aurait pu prédire la vague d’inflation, ainsi déclenchée [par la guerre en Ukraine] ? Ou la crise climatique aux effets spectaculaires encore cet été dans notre pays ? – “Who could have predicted the wave of inflation, also triggered [by the war in Ukraine] ? Or the climate crisis which had a spectacular impact in our country over the Summer?”

The comment angered environmentalists who note that the IPCC has been warning about the impact of a warming world since the 1990s; accuse Macron’s government of failing to act quickly enough on climate change; and say he has underdelivered on an early promise to “make the planet great again”. 

  • A process of de-civilisation

Emmanuel Macron said the government should travailler en profondeur pour contrer ce processus de décivilisation (“work deeply to counter this process of de-civilisation”). His comments came amid rising concern about attacks on elected officials and public-sector employees like teachers and nurses. 

In the past he has also spoken about the dangers ensauvagement (“descent into savagery”) and the need to reciviliser (“re-civilise”) France. 

READ MORE: France passes contentious immigration bill despite Macron party mutiny

Critics on the left accused him of borrowing this language of the far-right, who often use such terms to decry immigration and non-white, non-Christian communities. 

  • Take a walk to find a job

The French President has a track record of scepticism when it comes to struggling job-seekers.  

Si vous voulez travailler, il n’y a qu’à traverser la rue (“if you want to work, all you need to do is cross the street”) he famously told an unemployed gardener back in 2018.

When confronted by the angry mother of a job-seeker during a visit to Marseille in June, he responded: je fais le tour du Vieux-Port ce soir avec vous, je suis sûr qu’il y a 10 offres d’emploi (“I will take a walk around the Old Port with you this evening, I am sure that there will be 10 job offers”).

Old habits die hard. 

  • Depardieu makes France proud

Gérard Depardieu, the French actor who has faced allegations of rape and sexual assault, “makes France proud”, according to Emmanuel Macron. 

“I am a big admirer of Gérard Depardieu. He is a genius of his art-form,” he said. 

These comments came during a televised interview earlier this month, during which the President also denounced a perceived “man-hunt” against the actor and cast doubt on the claims made in a recent documentary that exposed his sexist attitudes. 

Macron’s position clashes with that of his Culture Minister, Rima Abdul Malak, who said that the actor had “brought shame on France” and has called for an procedure to be launched to strip Depardieu of his légion d’honneur. 

READ MORE: The famous faces stripped of France’s highest honour

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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