The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly summary of the major events taking place in French politics, published on Sundays in order to give you the perfect way to catch up with French news and events.

Polling update

A new week, a new poll!

Macron continues his ascendant campaign, capping this week off at a healthy 29% ahead of the rest of the candidates by a wide margin, undoubtedly helped by his strong leadership during the Ukraine crisis, a relatively strong showing during TF1’s ‘Face a la guerre’ “debate”, a newly announced programme, and the relative weakness of what is now, as my contacts tell me across the parties, a demoralised opposition.

Marine le Pen continues to be the favourite to reach the second round of the presidential election, currently sitting at 17.5% following a debate showing where she made a strong effort to appear leader-like, while Eric Zemmour stands in fourth place with 13% of the vote, following a debate showing that was far more muted than many expected, and which appeared to blend into the crowd of candidates. Valerie Pecresse, whose campaign continues to stutter, is currently sitting in fifth place, earning 11% of voting intention in this poll and suffering from a campaign that, for all intents and purposes, looks like it is slowly being abandoned by her Les Républicains colleagues.

On the left, one of the big moves in recent weeks has been Jean-Luc Melenchon storming ahead and positioning himself in third-place behind Le Pen despite a relatively weak performance in the debate. With Anne Hidalgo’s (2%) campaign all but finished, Taubira having abandoned her campaign, and with the rest of the left unable to achieve what they hoped, it’s entirely likely that Melenchon is slowly becoming the unity candidate despite having lost the popular primary.

Meanwhile Yannick Jadot is maintaining his position with 5% of the vote, followed shortly by Roussels with 4%, following his strong showing in the debate.

Macron Unveils his Programme

The much awaited announcement of the Macron 2022 electoral programme finally came on Thursday 17th March, as Macron took the stage in Aubervilliers and spoke for over an hour to discuss the key parts of his platform.

Reaching full employment within the next five years, ensuring French energy independence, pushing the retirement age to 65 years old, as well as an investment of 50 billion Euros in the military were some of the key measures that he intends to implement should he be reelected.

One of the more interesting proposals, if not unexpected, was the focus on the French military and its relationship with the nation, which Macron has pledged the reinforced with a renewed pact that he plans to develop, with a need to @think about how we can reinforce and revitalise this pact”.

One key part of this being a new civil mobilisation plan, as well as an augmentation of reservists, which he says will be doubled. In a discourse where he highlighted the return of tragedy to Europe in the invasion of Ukraine, the state of European security undoubtedly weighed heavily on his shoulders.

He also notable outlined a plan to turn Pôle emploi (the french unemployment agency) in ‘France Travail’, an institution that would better support unemployed citizens with simplified processes.

Other key ides were put forward, such as reinforcing the autonomy of universities, a reform of professional colleges, and reinforcing the ability of schools to decide what is most needed for them. All of this combined with a drive to reform institutions through a trans partisan commission that would focus exclusively on what are effectively constitutional matters.

Ultimately, Macron aims to continue pursuing his reformist agenda of transforming France into a more agile state with a less rigid architecture; one that is better equipped to support those studying, both young and old, as well as one that is better able to support unemployed citizens.

If you would like to take a look at it yourself, you can find it on the En Marche website here.

Did Macron Keep His 2017 Promises?

An analysis run by France Info has studied whether Emmanuel Macron kept his 100 promises from his 2017 programme, was recently published by the organisation in an effort to see whether the man who “promised to change everything” kept up his end of the electoral bargain.

Looking at the figures proposed, it would appear that the Presidential Candidate managed to fully deliver just under half (47) of his promises, and just over a quarter (28) of his promises only partially delivered.

Some of his major victories, of course, were replacing the tax on fortunes (Impôt sur la fortune) with a tax on real estate, halving the sizes of classes in CP and CE1 in education priority zones, making IVF available to all women, as well as recruiting an additional 10,000 police officers and gendarmes.

Meanwhile, the president failed to come through on exactly one quarter of his promises. Most notably, these include doubling the capacity of solar and wind energy in France, reducing the number of civil servants by 120,000, processing asylum request in under 6 months (including appeals), creating an obligatory universal military service of one month, and reducing the number of parliamentarians by one third.

Ultimately, however, how one perceived the President’s successes will depend entirely of their political leanings and ideologies.

Those who are members of La République en Marche will focus on the successes of this presidency and will highlight the difficulties that were faced in achieving the full reform package that he proposed; meanwhile, Ecologists will (and are) arguing that Macron abandoned the Environment, La France Insoumises and the Socialists circles will decry a destruction of French social security, Les Républicains will claim that France has never been so insecure, and both Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour will argue that not enough has been done to control immigration that is submerging.

And Fabien Roussel will just be happy to be involved in the discussion.

Jadot, and the struggle of an ecologist

Unfortunately, it’s not only Taubira and Hidalgo who have been struggling throughout the 2022 Presidential elections, but also Yannick Jadot, who has been suffering through a campaign described as un-dynamic, and which has led to the fall of a once ascendant political actor

Partly blamed on a complex and anxious environmental gambit throughout his work, a lack of presence, as well as the strengthened position of Jean-Luc Melenchon, there have been several questions asked about why his campaign has failed to take off.

If we look at previous results, the ecologists came in third place with 13.5% of the vote in the 2019 European Parliament elections, and in the municipal elections in 2022, EELV had several major victories in major cities such as Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Besançon and Tours. Then, in 2021, EELV managed to effectively force the Socialist party into several alliances across the country out of fear of losing the chance at strong left-wing candidates across the country.

And yet, following a pained and very close primary, as well as constant infighting within the party, Yannick Jadot has continued to suffer from a generally weak level of credibility.

Much of this has been put down, again, to what has been an overly complex platform that has been much more anxious than aspirational, one of the stronger points of the Macron and Melenchon campaigns, and has also been hampered by a certain level of radicalité that doesn’t necessarily strike a chord with the French population. Not only this, but with the ongoing fuel crisis, his decades-long campaign again for more renewable fuels has run head-first into one of the first priorities of any French citizen in an election year: their wallet.

Not only this, but Jadot suffers from a certain lack of presidentiability, with only 16% of French citizens believing him to be presidential in stature, a painful reminder of how far he has to come.

However, as always, we all need to remember that in politics things change rapidly, and it’s entirely likely that we’ve not heard the last of Yannick Jadot.

Can Macron speed up the calendar?

One of the more interesting ideas that have been floating recently, if slightly concerning for some, has been that of a potential acceleration of the election calendar in order to by dissolving the Assemblée nationale in order to bring the legislative elections closer to the presidential elections and reduce the empty time between the two elections.

Some have supposed that this is being proposed in order to avoid giving the opposition parties any time to breathe after a supposed loss in the Présidentiel elections, as well as to protect the deputies from La République en Marche who may lose their seats due to the campaigns in the weeks following the presidential elections. However, for the time being, these are primarily suppositions and proposals from some political actors, and not necessarily a plan that has been finalised and solidified.