What does Emmanuel Macron’s win mean for France?

To judge by the bulk of the French media and my various inboxes, there were sighs of relief across Europe at 8pm on Sunday when the face of France’s next president was revealed as the face of its outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron.

The near-universal judgement was that France’s “fragile centre” had held. Macron’s brand of left-right fusion had seen off the threat from Marine Le Pen’s new-look (and renamed) far-right party by a bigger margin than forecast – 58.5 to 41.5 per cent.

Not only was Macron back – the first president to win a second term for 20 years – but Europe was back. Macron proceeded to his victory rally to the strains of the European anthem, and European flags were waved along with the tricolour. And for French voters, there was a tacit admission that he had made mistakes in his first term. In his speech, he promised “a new era” – a more inclusive, less arrogant one, with lessons learned from his first term and solutions sought together with the French people.

So far, so good. But this is not the last word on the future of France – not even for this season. Nor are the results of this election as conclusive as they might seem. Le Pen’s 41.5 per cent of the run-off vote marks a significant advance in the vote for the far right. Having added 8 points to her tally compared with 2017, she was not completely wrong when she boasted to her enthusiastic supporters of a “resounding victory” even as she conceded defeat. This is a big slice of the presidential vote, and testimony to the new acceptability of the far right in France. Will it be the high water mark, or does it have further yet to go?

That question may partly be answered by what is sometimes called the “third round” of France’s presidential election. In less than six weeks, French voters will return to the polls for parliamentary elections that will determine how much room the re-elected president has for manoeuvre. And the campaigning began even before Macron set off for his victory rally.

Not only was Le Pen revving up her voters for the contests to come, but so were some of the no fewer than 10 candidates who had been eliminated in the first round of the presidential election. First up was Jean-Luc Melenchon, of the hard-left Popular Union, who had been only narrowly beaten into the run-off by Le Pen, and whose unexpected success, especially among young voters, underlined the polarisation of French politics.

Melenchon also delivered one of the more memorable lines of election night, when he described Macron as “the most badly elected” (“le plus mal elu”) French president of recent years – by which he meant the one with the least convincing mandate, taking account of the margin of victory and the number of votes he received. Pundits spent the next few hours “fact-checking” this claim, eventually coming up with a worse score for Georges Pompidou in 1969. It is nonetheless a charge that Macron may find hard to shake off, and could feed into the calculus for the parliamentary elections.

Granted that voters treat presidential elections differently from parliamentary elections – where they are focused on a personality at least as much as a party – the first round of the presidential elections offers a pointer to what could happen in June. Le Pen’s far right National Rally (which was once known as the National Front but was renamed as part of her general makeover) will want to consolidate its gains in the presidential race. Melenchon’s voters will again have candidates of their own to vote for – having mostly settled for Macron, or not voting at all, in the presidential run-off.

The traditional centre-right (Republicans) and centre-left (Socialist Party) – which were both eviscerated, along with the Greens, in the first round of the presidential election – may partially rebound, thanks to persisting strengths at the grassroots. All of which means that the next national assembly could be much more of a patchwork than the present one, making it more difficult for Macron to govern than the margin of his own victory would suggest. It could be even more difficult if the trend to the extremes is reinforced in June. The prospect then – as French doom-watchers have habitually warned after other elections – could be a “fourth round”, fought out in protests on the streets.

If the picture of a clear-cut win for Emmanuel Macron could prove deceptive, however, his determination and political nous should not be underestimated. He is the first French president to be re-elected for 20 years, and the election of 2002 hardly counts, as Jacques Chirac’s re-election became a foregone conclusion after Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, unexpectedly reached the second round. Macron showed political vision in creating his own movement – En Marche! – before the last election, to combine elements of the free market with social liberalism. En Marche, now the party La Republique En Marche, has confounded its critics by not only surviving, but affording Macron re-election.

At least as pertinent is that, as he enters his second term, Macron has an unusual combination of youthful energy and experience. Still only 44, he has five years at the Elysee under his belt – five years, what is more, that included the revolt of the Gilets Jaunes (the “yellow vests”), the Covid pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And still he achieved re-election. This is no mean feat. It also confirms him as the senior national leader in the European Union, indeed in Europe as a whole, at a time when the stars are aligning in favour of the priorities he has pursued.

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He leads a country that has largely avoided energy dependence on Russia – sparing him the economic and ethical choices now confronting Germany. He has championed a strong European defence, anticipating a time when the US might be less committed to European security than it has been in the past (and now is again). The need for stronger European defence now enjoys unprecedented support across the EU because of the war in Ukraine. While cutting ties with Moscow after the revelations of atrocities outside Kyiv, Macron has nonetheless tried to keep diplomatic channels open, making France a potential mediator in the event that serious peace talks become possible.

Any idea that Brexit and fractious relations with the UK present a problem for the re-elected Macron is also profoundly misguided. In so far as either was a presence in the election campaign, they served to support Macron’s commitment to the EU on behalf of France. And with Le Pen no longer campaigning for France to leave the EU, Macron’s France is well placed to re-emerge as the EU’s acknowledged leader.

The central issue for all parties in the presidential campaign was living standards, expressed as “purchasing power”. This is what fuelled support for both Le Pen and Melenchon. But it also played to Macron’s facility at cherry-picking policies from left and right. If he is serious about listening more, that could make the new parliament, however fragmented, less of a brake on his ambitions than it might otherwise be.

Indeed, the chief threat to Macron furthering his ambitions for France – including his now diluted pledge to raise the state pension age, a problem no recent French government has cracked – may have less to do with any uncooperative parliament or untoward events than with something quite different. The constitution limits a president to two terms. Macron himself may be talking about a “new era”, but it will not be long before his political rivals, of whatever stripe, start to anticipate the era post Macron. His greatest enemy may not be politics as such, but time.