He ruled bypassing parliament, unions and confidants. Now, six months before his end in office, riots and strikes are affecting a president who has little support left.
Paris. The tension can be seen in Emmanuel Macron. The French president recently visited security forces in Marseille with deep circles under his eyes. In the town hall he was shown the traces of the riots in mid-October: the graffiti on the wall, the broken entrance door, the damage to the fallen bust of Marianne - the symbol of the French Republic.
Then he said a sentence that you rarely hear from him: “We didn’t foresee this.” Self-criticism is unusual for Macron. The president is trying to regain lost trust.
His time as president will end in six months. He is not allowed to compete again. And the situation is getting more and more difficult for him. For weeks, resentment over education and the cost of living has been driving people in France onto the streets. There were violent riots and nationwide strikes on Thursday. At the same time, the high national debt no longer leaves him any room for maneuver. At the center of the crises: a president who once wanted to unite a divided France - and now stands almost alone.
And while the image of the eloquent, talented politician still prevails in Germany, the increasingly weaker president is met with anger and rejection in his own country. How could this happen?
Disappointment even within your own party
The pictures went around the world at the time. The young Emmanuel Macron, newly elected in 2017, stood in front of tens of thousands of supporters at the Louvre pyramid - full of hope. "Your trust obliges me. I don't want to disappoint you," he shouted at the time.
Today, many who voted for him in 2017 roll their eyes when Macron is mentioned. “He’s out of control,” some say. “Ten years is a long time,” say others. Even in his own party, many are simply disappointed.
Part of being French president is starting with high expectations and then falling in popularity. For Macron, the fall is particularly deep. According to an Ipsos-Cesi poll for “La Tribune du Dimanche” in October, only 15 percent of respondents are satisfied with his work, a negative record since he took office.
Macron is actually a people catcher. When he speaks to a group of 50 people, he manages to make everyone feel like they are being addressed personally. But in order to win people over, he has to let them get close to him. And that happens less and less often.
Hardly anyone knows this as well as Ania Nussbaum from Bloomberg. She is one of the seven journalists in the press pool who accompany the president wherever he goes. She wrote a book about this time. It is entitled “Accreditée”, in German “Akkreditiert”.
Before she started her job in 2019, Macron had decided to ban journalists from the heart of the palace. The press room, which has existed for more than 40 years, was to be moved outside.
What followed was a months-long dispute between journalists' organizations and the president, at the end of which a small hall remained - but also a certain distance: "Macron distrusts journalists more than his predecessors," she says. For Nussbaum, this is symptomatic: “Company bosses and many others who had actually supported him were gradually excluded,” she remembers.
Nussbaum describes Macron as a loner with a penchant for risk who wants to impress his interlocutors. It is difficult to grasp and reflects to people what they want to see. “The more time passes, the harder it is to understand,” she says.
“Jupiter President” – that’s what Macron once called himself, after the Roman god. The title was intended to symbolize a distant, elevated and strongly presidential leadership style.
But Macron is increasingly turning to himself. According to Nussbaum, he finds criticism difficult. “It happened that he simply ghosted advisors who criticized him,” she says.
In Macron's world it was increasingly said: regardless of losses. For example, he messed up with local politicians by abolishing the housing tax, an important source of income for municipalities, without feedback to lower decision-making levels. Since the Senate, the upper chamber of parliament, is directly linked to the local level, this made it much more difficult for it to pass its own legislative proposals.
In addition, he traditionally bypassed important intermediary bodies such as employers' associations or trade unions in order to implement his reforms, for example in the case of pension reform. “It can work well in the short term,” explains Nussbaum. “In the long term, there will remain unresolved social conflicts that repeatedly erupt on the streets.”
He loses his allies
Many old companions turn away from him. The most prominent examples are his former prime minister Édouard Philippe, who openly called for his resignation in autumn 2025. But also the leader of Macron's own party “Renaissance” and also a former prime minister, Gabriel Attal. Both are running for president themselves and are trying to distance themselves from the unpopular president.
The rift is rooted in the dissolution of the National Assembly in 2024. After his party's disastrous performance in the European elections, Macron dissolved parliament - without consulting his confidants. Then-Prime Minister Attal, who must be consulted in advance according to the constitution, later said the decision had been “hidden” from him in the days leading up to it. He was only informed immediately beforehand.
The Republican Senate President Gérard Larcher, long one of Macron's closest interlocutors, was also informed "in a minute and a half" shortly before Macron's announcement. Since then, he has taken offensive stands against the president on several occasions and criticized the “chaos” caused by the dissolution.
An election had to be organized within a few weeks and there was hardly any time for the campaign. Since then, the National Assembly has split into three camps without clear majorities, making decisions much more difficult. The starting position for Macron's camp was also extremely bad after losing the European elections. It lost a third of its seats - Macron had weakened himself. The Rassemblement National became the strongest party.
As political scientist Luc Rouban from the Sciences Po University explains, after the 2024 parliamentary elections, Macron left behind a situation in which the government is hardly able to act: “The centralist state is actually based on a strong executive.” Since the election, however, this has no longer been the case in France.
The break with the people
The dispute over pension reform triggered the final break between Macron and many people in France. In 2023, hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the reform for months. The pension reform, which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, was necessary to make the system fit for the future, but was extremely unpopular among the population.
The biggest problem, however, was that Macron used constitutional article 49.3 to push it through Parliament without a final vote. Although this is legal, it was perceived as disrespect for Parliament.
“They have lost all their credibility,” said demonstrator Elias Martin, who took to the streets the evening after the government’s 2023 decision. “This is the nail in the coffin for the legitimacy of the government.” This feeling has not gone away to this day.
According to political scientist Luc Rouban, Macron was increasingly perceived as arrogant and aloof: "Macron gave the impression that he was the smart man who knew where he wanted to take France, but he didn't even listen to the French." This also contradicted Macron's promises to govern more openly, organize referendums and listen to civil society.
The fact that he made decisions alone, without involving others, alienated other political forces from him, says Rouban. The Republican Senate President Gérard Larcher, for example, said that Macron “often had the opportunity to reach out, but never did so.”
The balance sheet
The balance sheet also includes the fact that Macron ultimately had to suspend the pension reform, the core of his second term in office, so that his government could continue to govern. At home, protests, the lack of a stable majority in parliament and the high national debt are shaping the debate. Macron did not cause all of these crises, but he did not prevent them either.
One thing is clear: six months before the end of his term in office, he can hardly do anything to counter them. He lacks political allies and the state finances leave little room for maneuver. Macron repeatedly emphasizes that he wants to rule until the last minute. But support for this continues to dwindle.
