Macron Stumbles Ahead of Rematch With Le Pen

(Bloomberg) -- When the Yellow Vest protests spread across France late last year — sparking looting on Paris’s Champs-Elysees, vandalism at the Arc de Triomphe and disrupting everyday life across much of the country — President Emmanuel Macron tried to take the high road and stumbled.

With images of burning streets and smashed symbols of French heritage still fresh, Macron faces a tight race in Sunday’s European elections with nationalist Marine Le Pen, who he edged in the first round of 2017’s presidential elections. If he loses — and some recent polls show him trailing — it could further undermine his grand plans for tighter European Union integration, and he’d have no one to blame but himself.

Macron is the focal point of the campaign of his Republic on the Move party, an organization created in 2016 as a vehicle for his presidential bid. The group is participating in only its third major race and lacks the deep network of more established parties like Le Pen’s National Rally. In the ballot for European Parliament seats, there is also no runoff — which helped Macron to a comfortable majority in 2017.

“I will put all my energy into ensuring that National Rally doesn’t come first,” Macron said this month. “I am a French and European patriot, and they are nationalists who want to deconstruct Europe.”

From the start of his presidency, Macron portrayed himself as the leader who would battle populists like Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. The 41-year-old graduate of France’s exclusive ENA school kicked off the parliamentary campaign in March with a letter published in newspapers in all 28 EU members calling for a “European Renaissance,” underscoring that his ambitions go well beyond France.

But his grand visions have done little for Macron at home. His aloof demeanor and contentious pro-business reforms early in his term have made him one of the region’s least popular leaders. Frustration finally boiled over in November with the Yellow Vest protests.

He initially took a regal approach, paying tribute to police and putting more security forces on the streets of Paris. But the anti-tax unrest continued unabated. Le Pen used the crisis to gain political capital. She rejected the violence — a stance palatable to mainstream French voters — and then blamed the outcry on Macron’s policies that had left much of France behind.

Under pressure politically, Macron backtracked from his hard-line stance and promised a 10 billion-euro ($12 billion) mix of tax cuts and subsidies. But six months after the first protests, Yellow Vest demonstrations are still a weekly routine in Paris and other French cities, even if the turnouts are gradually dwindling.

That threatens to make the outcome of the European vote — which Macron has repeatedly called “critical” — his next setback.

(This story is part of a series of “Postcards” from European capitals, which take a look at national implications of the vote for European Parliament.)

--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Chris ReiterBen SillsIain Rogers

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