Politicians in democratic countries are good at elections, not good at governing, but also afraid of reform. French President Macron is one of the anomalies, during his term of office, he has gone through a big cold and big heat: because he was favored by the voters for not being left or right, less than a year after taking office, he was in the middle of the left and right, Macron realized that he was bent on pleasing the voters also inevitably failed, simply determined to reform, France’s recovery plan finally came to fruition. Now only 400 days before the end of his term, the retirement benefits reform, which seems to go against the will of the public, and the anti-Islamist ideas, which have been accused by Islamic countries and British and American allies, have made him rise in the polls. This is a strange situation in the West.
The Anti-Islamic Separatism Act comes to fruition
On the evening of February 16, 2021, the French National Assembly passed the first reading of the Anti-Islamic Separatism Act, with 347 votes in favor, 151 against, and 65 abstentions. Currently, France has a Muslim population of around 7 million people, about 10% of its total population and the largest Muslim population of any country in the European Union. As long as the Islamic problem in France is understood, it is understood that Macron how difficult this step.
France has been plagued by terrorist attacks within the country in recent years, with the January 2015 Charlie’s Weekly incident making this conflict visible. But France is the center of the Frankfurt School, a leftist stronghold that has been hoping to defuse the conflict with flowers, candles and love under the self-imposed constraints of politically correct ideas. But each of the dozens of terrorist attacks over the past six years has deepened divisions, antagonisms and disillusionment, and French society has become increasingly divided and socially torn around freedom of expression, secularism and religious strife.
The turning point finally came on October 16, 2020, when the will to survive was finally activated in France after a history teacher was beheaded in the street for displaying cartoons of the Muslim prophet. In response to nationwide protests, Macron criticized “Islamism” in response to popular demands for security. But because the word “extremist” did not precede it, it provoked opposition from all Islamic countries, including pressure from allies in the U.S. and Britain, but Macron did not give in and finally led to the passage of the Anti-Islamic Separatism Act.
According to the introduction, the bill can shut down religious groups that incite violence against anyone or discriminate on the basis of gender. The bill provides for a five-year prison sentence and a €75,000 fine for those who threaten, violate and insult public officials on religious grounds, and a €3,750 fine for religious associations that do not account for foreign funding of €10,000 or more for their contributions. The bill provides for the formal Education of children between the ages of 3 and 16, with a small number of adolescents who choose to be educated at Home due to health or special circumstances, with the permission of the government. The bill also opposes practices such as polygamy, forced Marriage and virginity reporting.
Macron has also tried to push the idea of anti-Islamism within the EU. On November 10, 2020, Macron met with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz in Paris and held a videoconference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, permanent EU President Charles Michel and EU Executive Committee President von der Leyen to discuss the terrorist threat. The threat of terrorism is a direct target of immigration and Islamism.
Reform of the welfare system is on its way
On this point, I have analyzed the dilemma Macron faced more than a year after he took office in my article “Macron’s governance: left-right balance eventually becomes left-right balance” (RFA, 2019-11-19). Faced with the social dilemma of high welfare, Macron finally realized that there was no way out of the compromise, and simply made his attitude clear: “If you want to wear a suit, you have to earn money to buy it”; at the end of 2018, he also delivered that New Year’s message for 2019, which made the public extremely unhappy, and directly disliked those demonstrators in the Yellow Vests movement who were bent on welfare, saying “You can’t make contradictory demands. …… You want to reduce your workload but also want to earn more money; you want to reduce taxes but also want more benefits; you are unhappy with the status quo but you are not willing to make any changes.” His reform directly touches the most sensitive retirement benefit reform of the French with the strength of a force six gale.
The discontent caused by this reform was so strong that Prime Minister Philippe had to resign from the government; the new Prime Minister Castet, in addition to being responsible for easing the severe economic crisis hit by the Epidemic and restarting the economy, also had to start negotiations with the unions on the reform of the retirement system, issues that were the powder keg of the French social tide.
The negotiations with trade unions on the reform of the retirement system are expected to be ongoing after Castel took office to deal with the unemployment caused by the epidemic and will not be concluded for a while. According to the Ifop poll data released on January 24, 2021, Macron’s approval rating in January this year improved by two percentage points from the previous month to 40%; Kasdey’s approval rating remained at 37%. It is worth mentioning that even with such a fanfare of reforms, Macron’s approval rating during the same period of his presidency is still higher than that of his predecessors: 24% for Hollande’s presidency and 30% for Sarkozy’s.
Diplomacy with China parted ways with the US
On August 31, 2000, the French government announced a plan to reduce foreign dependence and return to strategic industries in five major industries: a 100 billion euro revitalization plan to revive France’s “industrial sovereignty”; and a 100 billion euro revitalization plan from 2021. Euro revitalization plan; from January 1, 2021, the production of various types of business tax relief of 10 billion euros. The French government has also joined forces with the French Public Investment Bank to “open the channel for grant applications to all companies that propose strategic industrial repatriation” – a plan that was jokingly described as a copy of Trump‘s “Make France Great Again” plan when it first came out. Greatness” plan.
At the moment, the plan is not being implemented as well as it could be because of the epidemic. At the G7 summit in 2021, Biden said he wanted to deepen the supply chain among Western allies, including hardware and software, to reduce dependence on the Chinese Communist Party. Macron, on the other hand, has tit-for-tat suggested that he is determined to improve the EU’s technological capabilities in order to reduce dependence on the U.S. and Chinese supply chains.
Macron has been considering “strategic autonomy” since Trump suggested that NATO members should be more autonomous in terms of funding, with a focus on relations with the two major powers. In terms of France-China relations, France has decided to return to the African game: in mid-February, the draft bill on foreign aid for inclusive development and the fight against global inequalities was adopted, with the aim of refocusing French foreign public aid on the 18 countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. The opponent in this “war of influence” is China, which holds 46% of the debt of African countries. In an interview with France Inter on February 18, French Foreign Minister Le Drian summed it up by saying, “We have entered into a war with China over [external] development models and influence.” –This talk, coupled with the French warships sailing into the South China Sea, was propagated by the Chinese side as “France has suddenly “declared war” on China, not only sending ships into the South China Sea, but also competing with China for influence”.
On February 19, in the G7 video conference, Macron talked about “strategic autonomy” in his speech. He suggested that as Europe becomes more and more concerned about Asia, especially China, Europe can no longer be overly dependent on the United States as it has been in the past decades. Macron wants NATO to be more of a political body in which European member states have the same status as the United States and are less influenced by U.S.-dominated decision-making tendencies. He believes that Europe should “take more responsibility for its own protection” and keep its promise to increase defense spending in order to rebalance transatlantic relations – in a thousand words, and into one sentence, France is no longer the United States’ little brother and follower.
Macron’s presidential term expires on May 14, 2022, and in the remaining 400 days, in addition to the slow results of foreign policy, which is not a priority for French voters, the anti-Islamism bill and the reform of the retirement benefit system are the keys for voters to decide whether he will stay or go. Therefore, whether the dream of French renaissance can be realized, only if Macron is re-elected can it come true.
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