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

Polling Update

In today’s polling update, we’re taking sneak peak at Harris Interactive’s poll on the first 100 days of Emmanuel Macron.

While I’ll be taking a broader, more in-depth look at the polling during the week, I figured we could look at the top-level results of the polling for the time being to wet your appetites!

We can see that public opinion of Emmanuel Macron is lopsidedly unsatisfied for the time being, with many a majority of women and rural citizens being unsatisfied by the last 100 days. However, we can explain this in several ways..

Firstly, when looking at the 65% of women who are dissatisfied, this could potentially be the result of the handling of the Damien Abad scandal, where a minister who was accused of rape sat in his post for several weeks before being eventually removed.

This, in particular, was something that I personally heard several times while working the campaign trail, and it’s likely to be something that left a sour taste in the mouths of many of our female compatriots.

It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that this could also be the result of the accusations towards former gynaecologist and MEP, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, who was likewise on the receiving end of several accusations, which will have painted the President in a poor light.

Secondly, when it comes to rural voters, this can be put down to resentment for the perceived lack of support that was given to farmers across France during the EU CAP funding negotiations that took place recently, a perceived lack of support for local French businesses, and most importantly, a perceived failure to prevent or stop the wildfires raging across France.

The last point is potentially the most important, as we have frequently seen members of the NUPES coalition appearing across the French media to claim that the lack of protection of French forests is down to the president’s lack of action, despite some interesting revelations of the voting records of certain left-wing deputies when certain measures were put forward to do just this.

However, if you look carefully, there was an interesting point there: that 91% of the people who said they were unsatisfied with the first 100 days of the second Macron Quinquennat were unsatisfied with his first five years in power, so there’s every chance that this could be a partisan action

Macron Warns of What is to Come

Warning of what will be an incredibly difficult winter for all of us, even if it pales in comparison to what Ukrainians are living through, President Emmanuel Macron appeared at Bormes-les-Mimosas spoke at the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the village, on August 17 1944.

Having already worked to prepare the French for a difficult post-summer return to school and work, he had previously highlighted the the risks of energy shortages and the soaring prices induced by the war in Ukraine during his July 14.

"I am thinking of our people, who will need the strength of soul to face the coming times, to resist uncertainties, sometimes to ease and adversity, and, united, to agree to pay the price of our freedom and our values" He said, taking his time to outline that the French, and Europeans as a whole, could expect the ghosts of our past to return, and remain, in our lives.

“Yes, the ghosts of the spirit of revenge, the flagrant violations of the sovereignty of States, the intolerable contempt of the peoples, the imperialist will reappear from the past to impose themselves in the daily life of our Europe, our neighbors, our friends, ”he hammered.

Contrary to what has surprisingly become common belief, that Emmanuel Macron is an appeaser of Putin’s authoritarian Russian state, once again denounced "Vladimir Putin’s brutal attack" in Ukraine, and spoke of his telephone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as well as with his Russian counterpart, "to seek to obtain the essential commitments to maintain nuclear security on Ukrainian soil"

In "this war which thunders at our doors", the tenant of the Elysée Palace hailed the "heroic resistance" of the Ukrainian people in the face of "terrible attacks by the Russian army and its auxiliaries".

The National Council for Refoundation

Having initially announced this new National Council in early June, Emmanuel Macron announced that the National Council for Refoundation will be launched on September 8.

Promised a "dialogue" on "the construction site of school, health , our major public services”, the initiative is intended to bring together, in the aftermath of the legislative elections of June 12 and 19, the political, economic, social and associative forces of the country, as well as citizens drawn by lot, to discuss and launch reforms that will touch upon everything from purchasing power, to ecology, institutions and retreats.

Accepting that the French are "tired of the reforms that come from above", appearing to accept a frequent criticism of his first quinquennat, Macron announced that discussions will reflect on the "five" objectives of his new five-year term: "independence (industrial, military, food, etc.), full employment, carbon neutrality, public services for equal opportunities, and the rebirth democracy with institutional reform”.

Macron Returns to Algeria

Last year, it was claimed that Macron stated that Algeria was ruled by a “political-military system”, and that the ruling elite has “totally re-written” the country’s “official history” to something “not based on truths” but “on a discourse of hatred towards France”.

Naturally, the Algerian government wasn’t too pleased about this, recalled it’s ambassador, and then stated that this was “inadmissible interference”.

However, after a mending of relationships in the year since, Macron is now planning to head to Algeria from August 25-27 in order to reinforce the Franco-Algerian relationship.

“This trip will contribute to deepening the bilateral relationship looking to the future…to reinforce Franco-Algerian cooperation in the face of regional challenges and to continue the work of addressing the past” said the presidency.

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