Emmanuel Macron Is Losing Control Over France’s Politics and Economy

Macron shattered France’s traditional party system, building from scratch a centrist movement meant to stand against Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Trump, by contrast, bent the Republican Party to his will, sidelining traditional conservatives and turning it into an instrument of combative MAGA populism.

Years later, their trajectories have diverged sharply. Macron is boxed in, juggling crumbling coalitions and risking lame-duck status two years before the end of his second and final term. Le Pen’s party has become the most popular in France and now leads early projections for the 2027 elections.

Trump, reelected last year despite his failed bid to overturn the 2020 result, now dominates his opponents and, in effect, the rule of law itself—with the acquiescence of a compliant Republican Congress.

Macron’s collapse—with his approval rating down to 19 percent—raises a series of unsettling questions. If not him, then who is capable of pulling Europe’s second-largest economy out of its protracted stagnation? How can the European Union assume greater responsibility for Ukraine and collective security when Macron himself—the chief advocate of “strategic autonomy”—cannot secure support at home? And what lessons should Democrats and other centrist parties draw if the French center implodes, becoming yet another casualty of populism?

The political shift began last year, when Marine Le Pen’s party, hostile to immigration and the EU, unexpectedly finished first in the National Assembly elections. The left performed nearly as well, and Macron’s Renaissance party lost its parliamentary majority. The anti-Le Pen front fractured, and French politics realigned from its traditional dualism into three blocs: a firmly anchored nationalist right, an uneasy alliance of left-wing populists and socialists, and Macron’s shrinking liberal center.

Since then, he has cycled through three prime ministers, none of whom managed to assemble a durable majority. The crisis peaked when Sébastien Lecornu resigned less than a month after his appointment, only to be forced back four days later—in a much weakened position. To secure Socialist backing, Lecornu froze Macron’s most contentious reform—the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64—and pledged to temper the drive for fiscal consolidation. Against this rollback, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Macron’s bid to overhaul France’s economy has failed.

When he was elected, he was just 39—the youngest president in the country’s history. A former Socialist, he built his own movement with the ambition of reviving a sluggish economy, cutting welfare costs, and loosening rigid labour-market rules that kept young people locked out of careers.

Eight years on, France’s economic and fiscal outlook is grim: growth this year is unlikely to exceed 1%, while the budget deficit may reach 5.4% of GDP—well above the EU’s 3% ceiling. Public spending stands at almost 57% of GDP—compared with 36% in the United States—the highest level in Europe.

The country’s generous welfare model dates back to the “thirty glorious years” after the Second World War, notes MEP Sandro Gozi. When growth slowed, France chose to maintain its commitments through high taxes and rising debt, effectively sacrificing dynamism in the name of equality.

In his first term, Macron tried to break this unspoken pact of “managed decline.” He reformed the labour market, cut corporate taxes, and abolished the wealth tax. But even these modest steps triggered fierce resistance from students and trade unions, and the president himself was branded a cold technocrat. The French have a long tradition of taking to the streets whenever they feel their social rights are under threat: the 2018 fuel tax rise sparked the “gilets jaunes” revolt, and in 2023 Paris was left buried in rubbish as sanitation workers struck against pension reform.

Many analysts blame Macron for arrogance and detachment. But the opposite question is just as pertinent: perhaps it is the public’s deep reliance on generous subsidies and state protection that makes the country incapable of change.

One way or another, France is left with an expensive, outdated welfare system that can no longer be sustained. And that, it seems, now threatens the country no less than the rise of the populist right.