For this strategy to succeed, Macron needs to be consistent. In other words, the President hopes to frame the autumn and winter protests as a narrow-minded refusal to accept that the West is in a prolonged state of economic war with Russia and that the war is as much about protecting the future of France and other Western countries as it is about helping Ukraine.
More from this author Does France need a Prime Minister? “I am thinking of our people,” he said, “and the strength of spirit they will need to… confront uncertainties, misleadingly simple responses and adversity and unite to accept that they must pay the price for our liberty and values.” In a would-be Churchillian speech last Friday, he asked the French people to view their coming difficulties as “the price of liberty”. Macron knows that he is facing a winter of discontent. His government is due to present a grand strategy for moving to renewable energy next month: it will be dismissed as by the Left as too timid and the Right as too painful. Yet Macron will struggle to rectify his patchy record on climate change in such a fragile economic environment. That cannot continue forever, even if the government carries through its plan to buy the remaining 16% of the company.Īll this comes during a Sahel-like summer in which French forests burned and farmland across the country turned yellow. So far, some of the cost of France’s energy price gap has been concealed by imposing record losses on the largely state-owned power company, EDF. If Moscow cuts off EU gas supplies, the real cost of gas and electricity in France - and the cost to the state of subsidising them - will explode.
But how long can Macron shield his nation from international inflationary forces? And what will it cost? Both the far-Left and far-Right are already pushing for the removal of sanctions against Russia. Domestic power bills have been capped at 2021 levels or just above. Inflation is running at 6.1%, which is substantially less than in the UK and most other EU countries. They say that the President does not represent a majority in parliament, let alone the country.įrance is weathering the threat of Ukraine-war-generated stagflation reasonably well. Macron’s opponents on the extremes of Right and Left now tell their supporters that his government is “illegitimate”. More from this author Macron's tormented second termįrance is not a patient country: politics goes to the street more rapidly than in any other democracy.
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