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Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as
President of France The president of France, officially the president of the French Republic (), is the executive head of state of France, and the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. As the presidency is the supreme magistracy of the country, the po ...
and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President
François Hollande François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
between 2014 and 2016. He has been a member of
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
since he founded it in 2016. Born in
Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; , or ) is a city and Communes of France, commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme (department), Somme Departments of France, department in the region ...
, Macron studied philosophy at
Paris Nanterre University Paris Nanterre University (), formerly University of Paris West, Paris-X and commonly referred to as Nanterre, is a public research university based in Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, France, in the Paris metropolitan area. It is one of the most pres ...
. He completed a master's degree in public affairs at
Sciences Po Sciences Po () or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of ''grande école'' and the legal status of . The university's unde ...
and graduated from the in 2004. He worked as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances and
investment banker Investment banking is an advisory-based financial service for institutional investors, corporations, governments, and similar clients. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by unde ...
at
Rothschild & Co Rothschild & Co SCA is a multinational Private banking, private and alternative assets investor, headquartered in Paris, France and London, United Kingdom. It is the flagship of the Rothschild banking group controlled by the British and French br ...
. Appointed Élysée deputy secretary-general by President Hollande after the 2012 election, Macron was a senior adviser to Hollande. Appointed Economics Minister in 2014, in the second Valls government, he led several business-friendly reforms. He resigned in 2016, to launch his 2017 presidential campaign. A member of the
Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of th ...
between 2006 and 2009, he ran in the election under the banner of En Marche, a
centrist Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policie ...
and
pro-European Pro-Europeanism, sometimes called European Unionism, is a political position that favours European integration and membership of the European Union (EU).Krisztina Arató, Petr Kaniok (editors). ''Euroscepticism and European Integration''. Pol ...
political movement he founded in 2016. Partly due to the Fillon affair, Macron was elected President in May 2017 with 66% of the vote in the second round, defeating
Marine Le Pen Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician of the far-right National Rally, National Rally party (RN). She served as the party's president from 2011 to 2021, and ran for the French presidency in ...
of the National Front. Aged 39, he became the youngest president in French history. In the 2017 legislative election, his party, renamed La République En Marche! (LREM), secured a majority in the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...
. Macron was elected to a second term in the 2022 presidential election, again defeating Le Pen, becoming the first French presidential candidate to win reelection since
Jacques Chirac Jacques René Chirac (, ; ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Pari ...
in
2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...
. Macron's centrist coalition lost its majority in the 2022 legislative election, resulting in a
hung parliament A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system (typically employing Majoritarian representation, majoritarian electoral systems) to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing ...
and formation of France's first
minority government A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in ...
since
1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...
. In 2024, Macron appointed
Gabriel Attal Gabriel Nissim Attal de Couriss (; born 16 March 1989) is a French politician who was the prime minister of France from January to September 2024. He was the youngest and the first openly Gay man, gay prime minister in French history. A member ...
as Prime Minister, after a government crisis. Following overwhelming defeat at the 2024 European Parliament elections, Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called for a snap legislative election which resulted in another hung parliament and electoral defeat for his coalition. Two months afterwards, Macron appointed Michel Barnier, a
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
and former chief
Brexit Brexit (, a portmanteau of "Britain" and "Exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February ...
negotiator, as Prime Minister. Only three months in, Barnier was toppled by a historic vote of no confidence, prompting Macron to replace him with centrist veteran
François Bayrou François René Jean Lucien Bayrou (; born 25 May 1951) is a French politician who has served as Prime Minister of France since December 2024. He has presided over the European Democratic Party (EDP) since 2004 and the Democratic Movement (France ...
. During his
presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified b ...
, Macron has overseen reforms to labour laws,
taxation A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal person, legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to Pigouvian tax, regulate and reduce nega ...
, and
pensions A pension (; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be either a "defined benefit plan", wher ...
; and pursued a renewable
energy transition An energy transition (or energy system transformation) is a major structural change to energy supply and consumption in an energy system. Currently, a transition to sustainable energy is underway to limit climate change. Most of the sustainab ...
. Dubbed "president of the rich" by opponents, increasing protests against his reforms, culminating in 2018–2020 with the
yellow vests protests The yellow vests protests or yellow-jacket protests (, ) were a series of populist, grassroots weekly protests in France that began on 17 November 2018 and ended on 28 June 2020. Some minor protests started again after the restrictions linked ...
and the pension reform strike. In foreign policy, he called for reforms to the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
(EU) and signed treaties with
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
and
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. Macron conducted €40 billion in trade and business agreements with China during the
China–United States trade war An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. president Donald Trump began Tariffs in the first Trump administration, imposing tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the aim of fo ...
and oversaw a dispute with Australia and the US over the
AUKUS AUKUS ( ), also styled as Aukus, is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States intended to "promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable." Initially announced on 15 September ...
security pact. From 2020, he led France's response to the COVID pandemic and vaccination rollout. In 2023, the
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
of his prime minister,
Élisabeth Borne Élisabeth Borne (; born 18 April 1961) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from May 2022 to January 2024. A member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Renaissance (French political party), Renaissance, she is the secon ...
, passed legislation raising the retirement age from 62 to 64; this led to public sector strikes and violent protests. He continued Opération Chammal in the
war against the Islamic State Many states began to intervene against the Islamic State, in both the Syrian civil war and the War in Iraq (2013–2017), in response to its rapid territorial gains from its Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014), 2014 Northern Iraq offensives, u ...
and joined in the international condemnation of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...
.


Early life

Macron was born on 21 December 1977 in
Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; , or ) is a city and Communes of France, commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme (department), Somme Departments of France, department in the region ...
. He is the son of Françoise Macron (née Noguès), a physician, and Jean-Michel Macron, professor of
neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...
at the University of Picardy. The couple divorced in 2010. He has two siblings, Laurent, born in 1979, and Estelle, born in 1982. Françoise and Jean-Michel's first child was stillborn. The Macron family legacy is traced back to the village of Authie,
Picardy Picardy (; Picard language, Picard and , , ) is a historical and cultural territory and a former regions of France, administrative region located in northern France. The first mentions of this province date back to the Middle Ages: it gained it ...
. One of his paternal great-grandfathers, George William Robertson, was English, and was born in
Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...
, United Kingdom. His maternal grandparents, Jean and Germaine Noguès (née Arribet), are from the Pyrenean town of
Bagnères-de-Bigorre Bagnères-de-Bigorre (, literally ''Bagnères of Bigorre''; ) is a Communes of France, commune and Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Hautes-Pyrénées Departments of France, Department in the Occitania (administrative region), Occita ...
,
Gascony Gascony (; ) was a province of the southwestern Kingdom of France that succeeded the Duchy of Gascony (602–1453). From the 17th century until the French Revolution (1789–1799), it was part of the combined Province of Guyenne and Gascon ...
. He commonly visited Bagnères-de-Bigorre to visit his grandmother Germaine, whom he called "Manette". Macron associates his enjoyment of reading and his leftward political leanings to Germaine, who, after coming from a modest upbringing of a stationmaster father and a housekeeping mother, became a teacher and then a principal. Although raised in a non-religious family, Macron was baptized a
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
at his own request at age 12; he is agnostic today. Macron was educated mainly at the Jesuit institute Lycée la Providence in Amiens before his parents sent him to finish his last year of school at the elite
Lycée Henri-IV The Lycée Henri-IV () is a public secondary school located in Paris. Along with the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, it is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and demanding sixth-form colleges ('' lycées'') in France. The school educates more ...
in Paris, where he completed the
high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...
curriculum and the undergraduate program with a "Bac S, Mention Très bien". At the same time, he was nominated for the "
Concours général In France, the Concours Général (), created in 1747, is the most prestigious academic competition held every year between students of ''Première'' (11th grade) and ''Terminale'' (12th and final grade) in almost all subjects taught in both genera ...
" (most selective national level high school competition) in French literature and received his diploma for his piano studies at Amiens Conservatory. His parents sent him to Paris due to their alarm at the bond he had formed with Brigitte Auzière, a married teacher with three children at Jésuites de la Providence, who later became his wife. In Paris, Macron twice failed to gain entry to the
École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
.Vincent de Féligonde
Emmanuel Macron, ancien conseiller du prince aux manettes de Bercy
, ''La Croix'', 26 August 2014
He instead studied philosophy at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense, obtaining a DEA degree (a master level degree), with a thesis on Machiavelli and
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
. Around 1999 Macron worked as an editorial assistant to Paul Ricoeur, the French Protestant philosopher who was then writing his last major work, ''La Mémoire, l'Histoire, l'Oubli''. Macron worked mainly on the notes and bibliography. Macron became a member of the editorial board of the literary magazine '' Esprit''. Macron did not perform
national service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...
because he was pursuing his graduate studies. Born in December 1977, he belonged to the last cohort for whom military service was mandatory. Macron obtained a
master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...
in public affairs at
Sciences Po Sciences Po () or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of ''grande école'' and the legal status of . The university's unde ...
, majoring in "Public Guidance and Economy" before training for a senior civil service career at the selective (ENA), training at the French Embassy in
Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
and at the
prefecture A prefecture (from the Latin word, "''praefectura"'') is an administrative jurisdiction traditionally governed by an appointed prefect. This can be a regional or local government subdivision in various countries, or a subdivision in certain inter ...
of
Oise Oise ( ; ; ) is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise. Inhabitants of the department are called ''Oisiens'' () or ''Isariens'', after the Latin name for the river, Isara. It had a population of 829,419 in 2019.< ...
before graduating in 2004.


Professional career


Inspector of Finances

After graduating from ENA in 2004, Macron became an Inspector in the ''Inspection générale des finances'' (IGF), a branch of the Finance Ministry. Macron was mentored by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the then-head of the IGF. During his time as an Inspector of Finances, Macron gave lectures during the summer at the "prep'ENA" (a special cram school for the ENA entrance examination) at IPESUP, an elite private school specializing in preparation for the entrance examinations of the ''
Grandes écoles Grandes may refer to: *Agustín Muñoz Grandes, Spanish general and politician * Banksia ser. Grandes, a series of plant species native to Australia * Grandes y San Martín, a municipality located in the province of Ávila, Castile and León, Spain ...
'', such as HEC or Sciences Po. In 2006, Laurence Parisot offered him the job of managing director for '' Mouvement des Entreprises de France'', the largest employer federation in France, but he declined. In August 2007, Macron was appointed deputy rapporteur for Jacques Attali's "Commission to Unleash French Growth". In 2008, Macron paid €50,000 to buy himself out of his government contract. He then became an investment banker in a highly-paid position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. In March 2010, he was appointed to the Attali Commission as a member.


Investment banker

In September 2008, Macron left his job as an Inspector of Finances and took a position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. Macron left the government when
Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa ( ; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012. In 2021, he was found guilty of having tried to bribe a judge in 2014 to obtain information ...
became president. He was originally offered the job by François Henrot. His first responsibility at the bank was assisting with the acquisition of Cofidis by Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe. Macron formed a relationship with Alain Minc, a businessman on the supervisory board of ''
Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
''. In 2010, Macron was promoted to partner with the bank after working on the recapitalization of ''Le Monde'' and the acquisition by
Atos Atos SE is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company with headquarters in Bezons suburb of Paris, France, and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communicat ...
of Siemens IT Solutions and Services. In the same year, Macron was put in charge of
Nestlé Nestlé S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. It has been the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 20 ...
's acquisition of Pfizer's infant nutrition division for €9 billion, which made him a millionaire. In February 2012, Macron advised businessman Philippe Tillous-Borde, the CEO of the Avril Group. Macron reported that he had earned €2 million between December 2010 and May 2012. Official documents show that between 2009 and 2013, Macron had earned almost €3 million. He left Rothschild & Cie in 2012.


Early political career

In his youth beginning in 1998, Macron worked for the Citizens' Movement for two years, but he never applied to be a member. Macron was an assistant for Mayor Georges Sarre of the
11th arrondissement of Paris The 11th arrondissement of Paris (''XIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 Arrondissements of Paris, arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, the arrondissement is referred to as ''le onzième'' (; "the eleventh"). The ar ...
during his time at Sciences Po. Macron joined the
Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of th ...
at the age of 24, but last renewed his membership for the period 2006–2009. Macron met
François Hollande François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
through Jean-Pierre Jouyet in 2006 and joined his staff in 2010. In 2007, Macron attempted to run for a seat in the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...
in Picardy under the Socialist Party label in the 2007 legislative elections; however, his application was declined. Macron was offered the chance to be the deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister François Fillon in 2010, though he declined.


Deputy Secretary-General of the Élysée (2012–2014)

On 15 May 2012, Macron became the deputy secretary-general of the Élysée, a senior role in President François Hollande's staff. Macron served with Nicolas Revel. He served under the secretary-general, Pierre-René Lemas. During the summer of 2012, Macron put forward a proposal that would increase the 35-hour work week to 37 hours until 2014. He also tried to hold back the large tax increases on the highest earners that were planned by the government. Hollande refused Macron's proposals. In 2013, his was one of the deciding votes against regulating the salaries of CEOs. Nicolas Revel, the other deputy secretary-general of the Élysée opposed Macron on a proposed budget responsibility pact favoured by the Medef. On 10 June 2014, it was announced that Macron had resigned from his role and was replaced by Laurence Boone. Reasons given for his departure included his disappointment at not being included in the first Government of Manuel Valls and his frustration with his lack of influence on the reforms proposed by the government. This was following the appointment of Jean-Pierre Jouyet as chief of staff. Jouyet said that Macron left to "continue personal aspirations" and create his own financial consultancy firm. It was later reported that he was planning to create an investment firm that would attempt to fund educational projects. Shortly afterwards he was hired as a
research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a p ...
at the
University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
with the help of businessman Alain Minc. He had also sought a position at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
. Offered a chance to be a candidate in the municipal elections in 2014 in his hometown of Amiens, Macron declined, leading François Hollande to reject Manuel Valls's idea of appointing him Budget Minister, as he had never been elected to public office.


Minister of Economics and Industry (2014-2017)

He was appointed as the Minister of Economics and Industry in the second Valls Cabinet on 26 August 2014, replacing Arnaud Montebourg. He was the youngest Minister of Economics since
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (, ; ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as simply Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981. After serving as Ministry of the Economy ...
in 1962. Macron was branded by the media as the "Anti-Montebourg" due to being pro-EU and much more liberal, while Montebourg was
eurosceptic Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek refor ...
and left-wing. As Minister of Economics, Macron was at the forefront of pushing through business-friendly reforms. On 17 February 2015, prime minister
Manuel Valls Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (born 13August 1962) is a French–Spanish politician who serves as Minister of the Overseas in the Bayrou government since 2024. He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under president Françoi ...
pushed Macron's signature law package through a reluctant parliament using the special 49.3 procedure. Macron increased the French share in the company
Renault Renault S.A., commonly referred to as Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English), is a French Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company curr ...
from 15% to 20% and then enforced the ''Florange law'' which grants double voting rights on shares registered for more than two years unless two-thirds of shareholders vote to overturn it. This gave the French state a minority share in the company though Macron later stated that the government would limit its powers within Renault. Macron was widely criticized for being unable to prevent the closing down of an Ecopla factory in
Isère Isère ( , ; ; , ) is a landlocked Departments of France, department in the southeastern French Regions of France, region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère (river), Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019.
. In August 2015, Macron said that he was no longer a member of the Socialist Party and was an independent.


Macron Law

A law which had originally been sponsored by Arnaud Montebourg before he left the government, and which had focused on "purchasing power", grew into the , a grab bag of measures liberalizing laws prohibiting work on Sunday and at night; restrictions on coaches for public transportation; regulations for debt collectors, barristers and auctioneers; and rules governing the rental of equipment by the military from private companies. The law also sought to simplify many government procedures, such as that for obtaining a driving licence. Manuel Valls, fearing that it would not pass in the National Assembly, decided to push the law through with the 49.3 procedure and so it was adopted on 10 April 2015. Estimates of the increase in GDP the law might generate ranged from 0.3% to 0.5%.


2017 presidential campaign


Formation of En Marche and resignation from government

Macron first became known to the French public after his appearance on the French TV programme ''Des Paroles Et Des Actes'' in March 2015. Before forming his political party
En Marche! Renaissance (RE) is a List of political parties in France, political party in France that is typically described as liberalism, liberal and centrist or centre-right. The party was originally known as (EM) and later (, LREM, LaREM or REM), be ...
, he gave a number of speeches, his first one in March 2015 in
Val-de-Marne Val-de-Marne (, "Vale of the Marne") is a department of France located in the Île-de-France region. Named after the river Marne, it is situated in the Grand Paris metropolis to the southeast of the City of Paris. In 2019, Val-de-Marne had a ...
. He threatened to leave Manuel Valls' second government over the proposed removal of dual-nationality from terrorists. He also took various foreign trips, including one to Israel where he spoke on the advancement of digital technology. Tensions around the question of Macron's loyalty to the Valls government and Hollande increased when they turned down a bill he put forward dubbed "Macron 2", which had a larger scope than his original law. Macron was given the chance to help draft into the El Khomri law and put specific parts of "Macron 2" into the law though El Khomri was able to overturn these with the help of other ministers. Amid tensions and deterioration of relations with the current government, Macron founded an independent political party, En Marche, in Amiens on 6 April 2016. A
social-liberal Social liberalism is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses social justice, social services, a mixed economy, and the expansion of civil and political rights, as opposed to classical liberalism which favors limited ...
, progressive political movement that gathered huge media coverage when it was first established, the party and Macron were both reprimanded by President Hollande and the question of Macron's loyalty to the government was raised. Several MEPs spoke out in support for the movement though the majority of the Socialist Party spoke against En Marche including
Manuel Valls Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (born 13August 1962) is a French–Spanish politician who serves as Minister of the Overseas in the Bayrou government since 2024. He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under president Françoi ...
, Michel Sapin, Axelle Lemaire and Christian Eckert. In June 2016, support for Macron and his movement, En Marche, began to grow in the media with ''
Libération (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968 in France, May 1968. Initially positioned on the far left of Fr ...
'' reporting that ''
L'Express (, stylized in all caps) is a French weekly news magazine headquartered in Paris. The weekly stands at the political centre-right in the French media landscape, and has a lifestyle supplement, ''L'Express Styles'', and a job supplement, ''R� ...
'', '' Les Échos'', , and '' L'Opinion'' had begun to support him. Following several controversies surrounding trade unionists and their protests, reported that major newspapers began to run front-page stories about Macron and En Marche. Criticized by both the far-left and the far-right, these pro-Macron influencers in the press were dubbed "Macronites". In May 2016, Orleans mayor Olivier Carré invited Macron to the festival commemorating the 587th anniversary of
Joan of Arc Joan of Arc ( ; ;  – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the Coronation of the French monarch, coronation of Charles VII o ...
's efforts during the Siege of Orléans. LCI reported that Macron was trying to take back the symbol of Joan of Arc from the far-right. Macron later went to Puy du Fou and declared he was "not a socialist" in a speech amid rumours he was going to leave the current government. On 30 August 2016, Macron resigned from the government ahead of the 2017 presidential election, to devote himself to his En Marche movement. There had been rising tensions and several reports that he had wanted to leave the Valls government since early 2015. He initially planned to leave after the cancellation of his "Macron 2" law but decided to stay on temporarily after a meeting with President François Hollande. Michel Sapin was announced as Macron's replacement, while Hollande said he felt Macron had "methodically betrayed" him. An IFOP poll showed that 84% of those surveyed agreed with his decision to resign.


First round of the presidential election

Macron first showed his intention to run by forming En Marche, but following his resignation from the government, he was able to dedicate more time to his movement. He first announced that he was considering running for president in April 2016, and after his resignation from the position of economy minister, media sources began to identify patterns in his fundraising indicating he would run. In October 2016, Macron criticized Hollande's goal of being a "normal" president, saying that France needed a more "
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...
ian presidency". On 16 November 2016, Macron formally declared his candidacy for the French presidency after months of speculation. In his announcement speech, he called for a "democratic revolution" and promised to "unblock France". He had expressed hope that Hollande would run several months earlier, saying that—as the sitting president—he was the legitimate Socialist party candidate. Macron's book ''Révolution'' was published on 24 November 2016 and reached fifth position on the French best-seller list in December 2016. Shortly after announcing his run,
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis Jean-Christophe Cambadélis (born 14 August 1951) is a French politician of the Socialist Party (PS) who served as the party's First Secretary from April 2014 to June 2017. He was a member of the National Assembly of France, representing the c ...
and
Manuel Valls Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (born 13August 1962) is a French–Spanish politician who serves as Minister of the Overseas in the Bayrou government since 2024. He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under president Françoi ...
both asked Macron to run in the Socialist Party presidential primary, which he ultimately refused to do. Jean-Christophe Cambadélis began to threaten to exclude members who associated or supported Macron following
Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...
mayor Gérard Collomb throwing his support behind him. Macron's campaign, headed by French economist Sophie Ferracci, announced in December 2016 that it had raised 3.7 million euros in donations, three times the budget of then-front runner
Alain Juppé Alain Marie Juppé (; born 15 August 1945) is a French politician. A member of The Republicans, he was Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac, during which period he faced major strikes that paralysed the c ...
. Macron came under criticism from several individuals, including Benoît Hamon−who requested he reveal a list of his donors and accused him of conflicts of interest due to the time he spent at Rothschilds, which Macron dismissed as "demagogy". Journalists Marion L'Hour and Frédéric Says later reported that he had spent €120,000 on setting up dinners and meetings with various personalities within the media and in French popular culture while at Bercy. Christian Jacob and Philippe Vigier accused him of using this money to campaign without campaigning. His successor, Michel Sapin, saw nothing illegal about his actions, saying that he had the right to spend the funds. Macron called the allegations "defamatory" and said that none of the ministerial budget had been spent on his party. Macron's campaign enjoyed considerable coverage from the media. Mediapart reported that over fifty magazine covers were dedicated purely to him. Friends with the owners of Le Monde and Claude Perdiel, the former owner of Nouvel Observateur, he was labelled the "media candidate" by the far-left and far-right and was viewed as such in opinion polls. Many observers compared his campaign to a product being sold due to Maurice Lévy, a former
Publicis Publicis Groupe S.A. is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. As of 2024, the company is the largest advertising company in the world by revenue. Based in Paris, it is one of the 'Big Four' advertising commpanies, al ...
CEO, using marketing tactics to try to advance his presidential ambitions. The magazine ''Marianne'' reported that BFM TV, owned by Patrick Drahi, broadcast more coverage of Macron than of all the other main candidates combined. ''Marianne'' speculated that this might be due to the campaigns links with Drahi through Bernard Mourad.
François Bayrou François René Jean Lucien Bayrou (; born 25 May 1951) is a French politician who has served as Prime Minister of France since December 2024. He has presided over the European Democratic Party (EDP) since 2004 and the Democratic Movement (France ...
, with whom Macron had been compared, announced he was not going to stand in the presidential election and instead formed an electoral alliance with Macron, whose poll ratings began to rise. After several legal issues surrounding François Fillon were publicized, Macron overtook him in the polls to become the front-runner. Macron attracted criticism for the time taken to spell out a formal program during his campaign; despite declaring in November that he had still not released a complete set of proposals by February, attracting both attacks from critics and concern among allies and supporters. He eventually laid out his 150-page formal program on 2 March, publishing it online and discussing it at a marathon press conference that day. Macron accumulated a wide array of supporters, securing endorsements from François Bayrou of the Democratic Movement (MoDem), MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the ecologist candidate
François de Rugy François () is a French language, French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis (given name), Francis. People with the given name * François Amoudruz (1926–2020), French resistance fighter * Voltaire, Fran ...
of the primary of the left, and Socialist MP Richard Ferrand, secretary-general of En Marche, as well as numerous others – many of them from the Socialist Party, but also a significant number of centrist and centre-right politicians. The Grand Mosque of Paris urged French Muslims to vote en masse for Macron. On 23 April 2017, Macron received the most votes in the first round of the presidential election, with more than 8 million votes (24%) and faced
Marine Le Pen Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician of the far-right National Rally, National Rally party (RN). She served as the party's president from 2011 to 2021, and ran for the French presidency in ...
in the second round, with the support of former candidates François Fillon and Benoît Hamon and the sitting president François Hollande.


Second round of the presidential election

Many foreign politicians supported Macron in his bid against right-wing populist candidate
Marine Le Pen Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician of the far-right National Rally, National Rally party (RN). She served as the party's president from 2011 to 2021, and ran for the French presidency in ...
, including
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...
President
Jean-Claude Juncker Jean-Claude Juncker (; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourgish politician who was List of prime ministers of Luxembourg, prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and president of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also was List ...
, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
, and former US President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
. A debate was arranged between Macron and Le Pen on 3 May 2017. The debate lasted for two hours and opinion polls showed that he was perceived to have won. In March 2017, Macron's digital campaign manager, Mounir Mahjoubi, told Britain's
Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel, live stream news network and news organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of ...
that Russia is behind "high level attacks" on Macron, and said that its state media are "the first source of false information". He said: "We are accusing RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik News (of being) the first source of false information shared about our candidate...". Two days before the French presidential election on 7 May, it was reported that nine gigabytes of Macron's campaign emails had been anonymously posted to Pastebin, a document-sharing site. These documents were then spread onto the imageboard
4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, mu ...
, which led to the hashtag "#macronleaks" trending on Twitter. In a statement the same evening, Macron's political movement, En Marche, said: "The En Marche movement has been the victim of a massive and coordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information". Macron's campaign had previously been presented a report in March 2017 by the Japanese cyber security firm
Trend Micro is an American-Japanese cyber security software company. The company has globally dispersed R&D in 16 locations across every continent excluding Antarctica. The company develops enterprise security software for servers, containers, and cloud ...
detailing how En Marche had been the target of phishing attacks. Trend Micro said that the group conducting these attacks was the Russian hacking group
Fancy Bear Fancy Bear is a Russian cyber espionage group. American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has stated with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Offic ...
, also accused of hacking the
Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal executive leadership board of the United States's Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party. According to the party charter, it has "general responsibility for the affairs of the ...
on 22 July 2016. 21,075 verified emails and another 50,773 emails it could not verify were released in July 2017 by WikiLeaks. This followed Le Pen accusing Macron of tax avoidance. On 7 May 2017, Macron was elected President of France with 66.1% of the vote to Marine Le Pen's 33.9%. The election had record abstention at 25.4%, and 8% of ballots were blank or spoiled. Macron resigned from his role as president of En Marche and Catherine Barbaroux became interim leader.


Presidency (2017–present)


First term (2017–2022)

Macron qualified for the runoff after the first round of the election on 23 April 2017. He won the second round of the presidential election on 7 May 2017 by a landslide according to preliminary results, making the candidate of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, concede. At 39, he became the youngest president in French history and the youngest French head of state since
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
. He is also the first president of France born after the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Macron formally became president on 14 May. He appointed Patrick Strzoda as his chief of staff and Ismaël Emelien as his special advisor for strategy, communication and speeches. On 15 May, he appointed
Édouard Philippe Édouard Charles Philippe (; born 28 November 1970) is a French politician serving as Mayor (France), mayor of Le Havre since 2020, previously holding the office from 2010 to 2017. He was Prime Minister of France from 15 May 2017 to 3 July 202 ...
of the Republicans as
Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
. On the same day, he made his first official foreign visit, meeting in Berlin with Angela Merkel, the
Chancellor of Germany The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal Cabinet of Germany, government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Government of Germany, ...
. The two leaders emphasised the importance of France–Germany relations to the European Union. They agreed to draw up a "common road map" for Europe, insisting that neither was against changes to the
Treaties of the European Union The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between the European Union (EU) member states which sets out the EU's constitutional basis. They establish the various EU institutions together with their remit, procedure ...
. In the 2017 legislative election, Macron's party La République En Marche and its Democratic Movement allies secured a comfortable majority, winning 350 seats out of 577. After the Republicans emerged as the winners of the Senate elections, government spokesman Christophe Castaner stated the elections were a "failure" for his party. On 3 July 2020, Macron appointed the
centre-right Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing politics, right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalis ...
Jean Castex Jean Castex (; born 25 June 1965) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 3 July 2020 to 16 May 2022. He was a member of The Republicans (LR) until 2020. Castex served for twelve years as mayor of the small town of ...
as the Prime Minister of France. Castex, described as a social conservative, was a member of the Republicans. The appointment was described as "doubling down on a course that is widely seen as centre-right in economic terms".


Domestic policy

In his first few months as president, Macron pressed for the enactment of a package of reforms on public ethics, labour laws, taxes, and law enforcement agency powers.


Anti-corruption

In response to Penelopegate, the National Assembly passed a part of Macron's proposed law to stop mass corruption in French politics by July 2017, banning elected representatives from hiring family members. Meanwhile, the second part of the law scrapping a constituency fund was scheduled for voting after Senate objections. Macron's plan to give his wife an official role within government came under fire with criticisms ranging from its being undemocratic to what critics perceive as a contradiction to his fight against
nepotism Nepotism is the act of granting an In-group favoritism, advantage, privilege, or position to Kinship, relatives in an occupation or field. These fields can include business, politics, academia, entertainment, sports, religion or health care. In ...
. Following an online petition of nearly 290,000 signatures on change.org Macron abandoned the plan. On 9 August, the National Assembly adopted the bill on public ethics, a key theme of Macron's campaign, after debates on the scrapping the constituency funds.


Labour policy and unions

Macron aims to shift union-management relations away from the adversarial lines of the current French system and toward a more flexible, consensus-driven system modelled after
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and Scandinavia. He has also pledged to act against companies employing cheaper labour from eastern Europe and in return affecting jobs of French workers, what he has termed as " social dumping". Under the Posted Workers Directive 1996, eastern European workers can be employed for a limited time at the salary level in eastern European countries, which has led to dispute between the EU states. The French government announced the proposed changes to France's labour rules ("Code du Travail"), being among the first steps taken by Macron and his government to galvanize the French economy. Macron's reform efforts have encountered resistance from some French trade unions. The largest trade union, the CFDT, has taken a conciliatory approach to Macron's push and has engaged in negotiations with the president, while the more militant CGT is more hostile to reforms.Pierre Briacon,
Emmanuel Macron plunges head-first into labor reform: France's new president is counting on divisions in the labor movement and fast-track legislation
, ''Politico'' (17 May 2017). .
Liz Alderman,

, ''The New York Times'' (20 June 2017). .
Macron's labour minister, Muriel Pénicaud, is overseeing the effort. The National Assembly, including the Senate approved the proposal, allowing the government to loosen the labour laws after negotiations with unions and employers' groups. The reforms, which were discussed with unions, limit payouts for dismissals deemed unfair and give companies greater freedom to hire and fire employees as well as to define acceptable working conditions. The president signed five
decrees A decree is a legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state, judge, royal figure, or other relevant authorities, according to certain procedures. These procedures are usually defined by the constitution, Legislative laws, or customary l ...
reforming the labour rules on 22 September. Government figures released in October 2017 revealed that during the legislative push to reform the labour code, the unemployment rate had dropped 1.8%, the biggest since 2001.


=Migrant crisis

= Speaking on refugees and, specifically, the Calais Jungle, Macron said on 16 January 2018 that he would not allow another refugee camp to form in Paris before outlining the government policy towards immigration and asylum. He has also announced plans to speed up asylum applications and deportations but give refugees better housing. On 23 June 2018, President Macron said: "The reality is that Europe is not experiencing a migration crisis of the same magnitude as the one it experienced in 2015", "a country like Italy has not at all the same migratory pressure as last year. The crisis we are experiencing today in Europe is a political crisis". In November 2019, Macron introduced new immigration rules to restrict the number of refugees reaching France, while stating to "
take back control "Take back control", or sometimes "let's take back control", was a British political slogan associated with the Brexit referendum, popularised by the Vote Leave campaign. It was used by supporters of Brexit, Britain's withdrawal from the Euro ...
" of the immigration policy. In 2022, the total number of new foreigners coming to France rose above 320,000 for the first time, with nearly a majority coming from
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
.


=Economic policy

= Pierre de Villiers, then-Chief of the General Staff of the Armies, stepped down on 19 July 2017 following a confrontation with Macron. De Villiers cited the military budget cut of €850 million as the main reason he was stepping down. ''Le Monde'' later reported that De Villiers told a parliamentary group, "I will not let myself be fucked like this." Macron named
François Lecointre François Gérard Marie Lecointre (; born 6 February 1962) is a French Army general (France), army general who has served as Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Order of the Legion of Honour since 1 February 2023. He previously served as Ch ...
as De Villiers' replacement. Macron's government presented its first budget on 27 September, the terms of which reduced taxes as well as spending to bring the public deficit in line with the EU's fiscal rules. The budget replaced the
wealth tax A wealth tax (also called a capital tax or equity tax) is a tax on an entity's holdings of assets or an entity's net worth. This includes the total value of personal assets, including cash, bank deposits, real estate, assets in insurance and ...
with one targeting real estate, fulfilling Macron's campaign pledge to scrap the wealth tax. Before it was replaced, the tax collected up to 1.5% of the wealth of French residents whose global worth exceeded €1.3m. In February 2018, Macron announced a plan to offer voluntary redundancy in an attempt to further cut jobs from the French civil service. In December 2019, Macron announced that he would scrap the 20th-century pension system and introduce a single national pension system managed by the state. In January 2020, after weeks of public transport shutdown and vandalism across Paris against the new pension plan, Macron compromised on the plan by revising the retirement age. In February, the pension overhaul was adopted by decree using Article 49 of the French constitution. However, on 16 March 2020, Macron announced that the draft legislation would be pulled as France went into
lockdown A lockdown () is a restriction policy for people, community or a country to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks that could possibly harm the people if they move and interact freely. The term is used for a prison protocol that us ...
to slow the spread of
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...
.


=Terrorism

= In July 2017, the Senate approved its first reading of a controversial bill with stricter anti-terror laws, a campaign pledge of Macron. The National Assembly voted on 3 October to pass bill 415–127, with 19 abstentions. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb described France as being "still in a state of war" ahead of the vote, with the 1 October Marseille stabbing having taken place two days prior. The Senate then passed the bill on its second reading by a 244–22 margin on 18 October. Later that day Macron stated that 13 terror plots had been foiled since early 2017. The law replaced the state of emergency in France and made some of its provisions permanent. The bill was criticized by human rights advocates. A public poll by showed 57% of the respondents approved of it even though 62% thought it would encroach on personal freedoms. The law gives authorities expanded power to search homes, restrict movement, close places of worship, and search areas around train stations and international ports and airports. It was passed after modifications to address concerns about civil liberties. The most punitive measures will be reviewed annually and were scheduled to lapse by the end of 2020. The bill was signed into law by Macron on 30 October 2017. He announced that starting 1 November, it would bring an end to the state of emergency.


=Civil rights

= Visiting
Corsica Corsica ( , , ; ; ) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the Regions of France, 18 regions of France. It is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the Metro ...
in February 2018, Macron sparked controversy when he rejected Corsican nationalist wishes for Corsican as an official language but offered to recognize Corsica in the French constitution. Macron also proposed a plan to "reorganise" the Islamic religion in France saying: "We are working on the structuring of Islam in France and also on how to explain it, which is extremely important – my goal is to rediscover what lies at the heart of ''
laïcité (; 'secularism') is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as the separation of civil society and religious society. It discourages religious involvement in governmen ...
'', the possibility of being able to believe as not to believe, in order to preserve national cohesion and the possibility of having freedom of conscience." He declined to reveal further information about the plan.


=Foreign policy and national defence

= Macron attended the 2017 Brussels summit on 25 May 2017, his first NATO summit as president of France. At the summit, he met US President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
for the first time. The meeting was widely publicized due to a handshake between the two of them, characterized as a "power-struggle". On 29 May 2017, Macron met with
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
at the
Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...
. The meeting sparked controversy when Macron denounced Russia Today and Sputnik, accusing the news agencies of being "organs of influence and propaganda, of lying propaganda". Macron also urged cooperation in the conflict against
ISIS Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...
and warned that France would respond with force in Syria if chemical weapons were used. In response to the chemical attack in Douma, Syria in 2018, Macron directed French participation in airstrikes against Syrian government sites, coordinated with the United States and the United Kingdom. In his first major foreign policy speech on 29 August, President Macron stated that fighting Islamist terrorism at home and abroad was France's top priority. Macron urged a tough international stance to pressure North Korea into negotiations, on the same day it fired a missile over Japan. He also affirmed his support for the Iranian nuclear deal and criticized Venezuela's government as a "dictatorship". He added that he would announce his new initiatives on the future of the European Union after the German elections in September. At the 56th Munich Security Conference in February, Macron presented his 10-year vision policy to strengthen the European Union. Macron remarked that larger budget, integrated capital markets, effective defence policy and quick decision-making held the key for Europe. He added that reliance on NATO and especially the US and the UK was not good for Europe, and a dialogue must be established with Russia. Prior to the 45th G7 summit in
Biarritz Biarritz ( , , , ; also spelled ; ) is a city on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in the French Basque Country in southwestern France. It is located from the border with Spain. It is a luxu ...
, France, Macron hosted Vladimir Putin at the Fort de Brégançon, stating that "Russia fully belongs within a Europe of values." At the summit itself, Macron was invited to attend on the margins by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Macron, who "attempted a high-risk diplomatic gambit", thought that the Foreign Minister of Iran might be able to defuse the tense situation over the Iranian nuclear programme in spite of the recent uptick in tensions between the Islamic Republic and the United States and Britain. In March 2019, at a time when China–U.S. economic relations were troubled with a
trade war A trade war is an economic conflict often resulting from extreme protectionism, in which states raise or implement tariffs or other trade barriers against each other as part of their commercial policies, in response to similar measures imposed ...
underway, Macron and Chinese leader
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
signed a series of 15 large-scale trade and business agreements totaling 40 billion euros (US$45 billion) which covered many sectors over a period of years. This included a €30 billion purchase of airplanes from
Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...
. Going beyond aviation, the new trade agreement covered French exports of chicken, a French-built offshore wind farm in China, a Franco-Chinese cooperation fund, as well as billions of Euros of co-financing between
BNP Paribas BNP Paribas (; sometimes referred to as BNPP or BNP) is a French multinational universal bank and financial services holding company headquartered in Paris. It was founded in 2000 from the merger of two of France's foremost financial instituti ...
and the
Bank of China The Bank of China (BOC; ; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Banco da China'') is a state-owned Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, Beijing, China. It is one of ...
. Other plans included billions of euros to be spent on modernizing Chinese factories, as well as new ship building. In July 2020, Macron called for sanctions against
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
for violating Greece's and Cyprus' sovereignty, saying it is "not acceptable that the maritime space of (EU) member states be violated and threatened." He also criticized Turkish military intervention in Libya. Macron said that "We have the right to expect more from Turkey than from Russia, given that it is a member of NATO." In 2021, Macron was reported as saying
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
was not truly part of the United Kingdom following disputes with UK Prime Minister
Boris Johnson Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He wa ...
over implementations of the Northern Ireland protocol. He later denied this, saying he was referring to the fact that Great Britain is separated from Northern Ireland by sea in reference to the Irish Sea border. French-U.S. relations became tense in September 2021 due to fallout from the
AUKUS AUKUS ( ), also styled as Aukus, is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States intended to "promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable." Initially announced on 15 September ...
security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The security pact is directed at countering Chinese power in the
Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...
region. As part of the agreement, the U.S. agreed to provide
nuclear-powered submarine A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor, but not necessarily nuclear-armed. Nuclear submarines have considerable performance advantages over "conventional" (typically diesel-electric) submarines. Nuclear propulsion, ...
s to Australia. After entering into AUKUS, the Australian government canceled an agreement that it had made with France for the provision of French conventionally powered submarines, angering the French government. On 17 September, France recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the US for consultations. Despite tension in the past, France had never before withdrawn its ambassador to the United States. After a call between Macron and U.S. President
Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...
on request from the latter, the two leaders agreed to reduce bilateral tensions, and the White House acknowledged the crisis could have been averted if there had been open consultations between allies. On 26 November 2021, Macron and Italian Prime Minister
Mario Draghi Mario Draghi (; born 3 September 1947) is an Italian politician, economist, academic, banker, statesman, and civil servant, who served as the prime minister of Italy from 13 February 2021 to 22 October 2022. Prior to his appointment as prime mi ...
signed the Quirinal Treaty at the
Quirinal Palace The Quirinal Palace ( ) is a historic building in Rome, Italy, the main official residence of the President of Italy, President of the Italian Republic, together with Villa Rosebery in Naples and the Tenuta di Castelporziano, an estate on the outs ...
in Rome. The treaty aimed to promote the convergence and coordination of French and Italian positions in matters of European and foreign policies, security and defence, migration policy, economy, education, research, culture and cross-border cooperation. During the prelude to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Macron spoke face-to-face and on the phone to Russian President
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
. During Macron's campaign for the re-election, nearly two months after the Russian invasion began, Macron called on European leaders to maintain dialogue with Putin.


=Approval ratings

= According to an IFOP poll for '' Le Journal du Dimanche'', Macron started his five-year term with a 62% approval rating, which rose to 64% by 24 June. One month later, Macron suffered a 10% point drop in popularity, the largest at the beginning of a term for any president since
Jacques Chirac Jacques René Chirac (, ; ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Pari ...
in 1995, and by August, his popularity had fallen off 24 percentage points since June. This was attributed to his recent confrontations with former Chief of Defence Staff Pierre de Villiers, the nationalization of the
Chantiers de l'Atlantique Chantiers de l'Atlantique is a shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, Saint-Nazaire, France. It is one of the world's largest shipyards, constructing a wide range of commercial, naval, and passenger ships. It is located near Nantes, at the mouth of the Loire, ...
shipyard owned by the bankrupt STX Offshore & Shipbuilding, and a reduction in housing benefits. By the end of September 2017, seven out of ten respondents said that they believed Emmanuel Macron was respecting his campaign promises, though a majority felt that the policies the government was putting forward were "unfair". Macron's popularity fell sharply again in 2018, reaching about 25% by the end of November during the
yellow vests movement The yellow vests protests or yellow-jacket protests (, ) were a series of Populism, populist, grassroots weekly protests in France that began on 17 November 2018 and ended on 28 June 2020. Some minor protests started again after the restriction ...
. During the
COVID-19 pandemic in France The COVID-19 pandemic in France has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. The virus was confirmed to have reached France on 24 January 2020, when the first COVID-19 case in both Europe and France was identified in Bordeaux. T ...
, his popularity increased, reaching 50% at its highest in July 2020.


=Benalla affair

= On 18 July 2018, ''Le Monde'' revealed in an article that a member of Macron's staff Alexandre Benalla posed as a police officer and beat a protester during May Day demonstrations in Paris earlier in the year and was suspended for a period of 15 days before only being internally demoted. The Élysée failed to refer the case to the public prosecutor and a preliminary investigation into the case was not opened until the day after the publication of the article, and the lenient penalty served by Benalla raised questions within the opposition about whether the executive deliberately chose not to inform the public prosecutor as required under the code of criminal procedure.


2022 presidential campaign

In the 2022 election, Macron was the first incumbent to be re-elected since Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 election. Macron again defeated Marine Le Pen in the runoff, this time by a closer margin, with 58.55% of the votes to Le Pen's 41.45%. Due to near-record abstentions, this represented 38.52% of registered voters, the lowest figure since
Georges Pompidou Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou ( ; ; 5 July 19112 April 1974) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1969 until his death in 1974. He previously served as Prime Minister of France under President Charles de Gaulle from 19 ...
's 37.5% in 1969. The French far-right received their highest vote total since the start of the French Republic, with nationalist candidates (Le Pen, Zemmour and Dupont-Aignan) winning 32.3% of the votes in the first round and Le Pen achieving a record 41.5% of the votes in the second round.


Second term (2022–present)

Though Macron's second inauguration took place on 7 May 2022, his second presidential term officially began on 14 May 2022.


Borne government

On 16 May 2022, Prime Minister
Jean Castex Jean Castex (; born 25 June 1965) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 3 July 2020 to 16 May 2022. He was a member of The Republicans (LR) until 2020. Castex served for twelve years as mayor of the small town of ...
resigned after 22 months as head of government. The same day, President Macron appointed
Élisabeth Borne Élisabeth Borne (; born 18 April 1961) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from May 2022 to January 2024. A member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Renaissance (French political party), Renaissance, she is the secon ...
at the
Hôtel Matignon The Hôtel Matignon (, ) is the official residence of the Prime Minister of France. It is located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, at 57 Rue de Varenne. The name Matignon is often used as a metonym for the governmental action of the French p ...
, thus making her the second female PM in French history after
Édith Cresson Édith Jeanne Thérèse Cresson (; Campion; born 27 January 1934) is a French politician of the Socialist Party. She served as Prime Minister of France from 1991 to 1992, the first woman to do so and only woman until Élisabeth Borne's appoint ...
between 1991 and 1992. She then formed a new government on 20 May 2022.


2022 legislative election

In June 2022, one month into his second term, less than two weeks before the end of the French presidency of the Council of the EU and days after he called for voters to hand him a "solid majority" in a controversial 'tarmac speech', Macron lost his parliamentary majority and was returned a
hung parliament A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system (typically employing Majoritarian representation, majoritarian electoral systems) to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing ...
in the second round of the 2022 legislative election: Macron's presidential coalition, which enjoyed a 115-seat majority going into the election, failed to reach the threshold of 289 seats needed to command an overall majority in the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...
, retaining only 251 out of the 346 it had held in the previous Assembly, and falling 38 short of an absolute majority. Crucially, three close political allies to President Macron were defeated in the elections: incumbent President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, Macron's own LREM parliamentary party leader Christophe Castaner and MoDem parliamentary group leader Patrick Mignola, thus effectively "decapitating" Macron's parliamentary bloc leadership and further weakening the President's political position in hung parliament territory. Three government ministers resigned after losing their seats: Justine Bénin (junior minister for the Sea), Brigitte Bourguignon (Minister for Health and Prevention) and Amélie de Montchalin (Minister for Ecological Transition). Macron's government, still led by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, was reshuffled in early July 2022 and continued as a minority administration, after talks with opposition leaders to form a stable
majority government A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties that hold an absolute majority of seats in a legislature. Such a government can consist of one party that holds a majority on its own, or be a coalition government of multi ...
failed.


Domestic affairs

Macron's second presidential term began with two significant political controversies. Hours after the new Borne cabinet was announced, rape accusations against newly appointed Minister for Solidarity
Damien Abad Damien Abad (; born 5 April 1980) is a French politician who briefly served as Minister of Solidarity in the Borne government, government of Prime Minister of France, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in 2022. Abad previously served as Member of ...
were made public, and on 28 May, the handling of the 2022 UEFA Champions League final chaos at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis drew criticism at home and abroad. Despite its minority status in the legislature after the 2022 legislative election, Macron's government passed bills to ease the cost-of-living crisis, to repeal the COVID-era "state of health emergency", and to revive the French nuclear energy sector. However, government proposals were defeated several times in the National Assembly and by the end of 2022, the Borne cabinet had had to use the provisions of Article 49.3 of the Constitution ten times in a row to pass the 2023 Government Budget and Social Security Budget. In May 2024, protests and riots broke out in
New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...
. On 22 May, Macron visited the island.


=Pension reform

= In March 2023, Macron's government passed a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, partly bypassing Parliament by again resorting to Article 49.3 to break the parliamentary deadlock. Nationwide protests that had begun when the bill was introduced back in January increased in intensity after the reform was passed without a solemn vote.


=Votes of no-confidence in the Borne government

= On 20 March 2023, Macron's cabinet, headed by Prime minister Borne, survived a cross-party
motion of no-confidence In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an obse ...
by only nine votes, the slimmest margin for such a vote since 1992. On 12 June 2023, his government survived its 17th no-confidence motion since the beginning of the 16th legislature; the motion, brought by the left-wing NUPES coalition, fell 50 votes short of the 289 votes needed.


=Nahel Merzouk riots

= In early summer 2023, French authorities faced
riots A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The p ...
following the killing of Nahel M., aged 17, by a police officer during a traffic stop. To calm widespread unrest, comparable in intensity to the 2005 French riots, Macron's administration ramped up government response, with a total of 45,000 police officers deployed on the ground and a ministerial order advising courts to apply harsher sentences and accelerated procedures: this crackdown resulted in over 1,300 arrests on the fourth night of unrest alone, bringing the total number of arrests since the riots' beginning to over 2,000 as of 1 July.


=2023 government reshuffle

= On 20 July 2023, Macron carried out a
government reshuffle A cabinet reshuffle or shuffle occurs when a head of government rotates or changes the composition of Minister (government), ministers in their Cabinet (government), cabinet, or when the head of state changes the head of government and a number of ...
at the end of the "hundred days of appeasement and action" he called for in April 2023 following the violent protests surrounding the passage of his pension system reform. Pap Ndiaye and
Marlène Schiappa Marlène Schiappa (; born 18 November 1982) is a French writer and politician who served as State Secretary for the Social and Solidarity Economy and Associative Life, attached to the Prime Minister, in the Borne government (2022–2023), as Mi ...
were sacked as part of the reshuffle.


=Defence policy

= On 1 August 2023, Macron signed into law a multi-year military planning bill, which set the stage for a 40%-increase in military spending to a total of €413 billion between 2024 and 2030, after it was passed by the French parliament on 13 July 2023.


=Immigration policy

= In February 2023, Macron's government introduced an immigration and asylum bill aimed at removing deportation safeguards, fast-tracking asylum application process and immigration litigation, while also facilitating legalization of undocumented workers. His government later pulled the draft legislation amid fears of defeat in Parliament, instead planning to hold talks with the centre-right LR party before reintroducing the bill in the autumn. In August 2023, in a lengthy interview with weekly magazine ''
Le Point ''Le Point'' () is a French weekly political and conservative news magazine published in Paris. It is one of the three major French news magazines. ''Le Point'' was founded in 1972 by former journalists of ''L'Express'' and quickly rose to be ...
'', Macron said that France "must significantly reduce immigration, starting with illegal immigration" because the "current situation is not sustainable". On 11 December 2023, the "flagship" immigration bill introduced by Macron's government was unexpectedly defeated after the narrow passage of a motion for preliminary dismissal in the National Assembly. Political commentators and news media described the vote as a "spectacular debacle", eventually sparking a major political crisis for Macron's minority administration. In an effort to salvage the bill, Macron's government sent the draft legislation to a joint parliamentary committee: it resulted in a deal with the conservative-controlled
Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
on a drastically hardened bill. On 19 December 2023, the French Parliament passed the piece of legislation thanks to support from the conservative LR and far-right RN parliamentary groups and in spite of a major rebellion from Macron's own coalition and ministers. Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau, whom Macron had appointed to the government only six months earlier, resigned shortly after the vote.


=Constitutional reform

= On the 65th anniversary of the French Constitution on 4 October 2023, Macron unveiled avenues for constitutional reform: broadening the scope and relaxing rules for referendums; enshrining the right to abortion and climate protection in the Constitution; stepping up the level of territorial devolution; giving some form of political autonomy to
Corsica Corsica ( , , ; ; ) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the Regions of France, 18 regions of France. It is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the Metro ...
and
New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...
. On 4 March 2024, a joint session of the French Parliament passed a constitutional amendment supported by Macron to protect abortion as a 'guaranteed freedom' in the Constitution. It represented the first constitutional reform since 2008 and the first since Macron took office in 2017.


=Attal government

= In January 2024, in the wake of the government crisis produced by the passage of the 'controversial' immigration bill, Macron requested Prime minister Élisabeth Borne to resign and subsequently replaced her by Education minister
Gabriel Attal Gabriel Nissim Attal de Couriss (; born 16 March 1989) is a French politician who was the prime minister of France from January to September 2024. He was the youngest and the first openly Gay man, gay prime minister in French history. A member ...
, making him both the youngest head of government in French history and the first openly gay man ever to hold the job. The new Attal cabinet was widely described as the most right-leaning government since the start of the Macron Presidency: out of the 14 Cabinet ministers appointed on 11 January 2024 by Macron and Attal, 57% are former members of the conservative UMP/LR party, while prominent left-leaning ministers of the outgoing Borne government were sacked, moves described as indicating a notable tilt to the right.


=Economy

= In February 2024, amid slowing economic growth and disappointing unemployment figures, Macron's government unveiled €10 billion in emergency spending cuts to hold to its 2024 deficit goal. A month later, Macron convened a 'crisis meeting' to discuss the state of France's public finances amid reports showing that the government had heavily missed its 2023 fiscal targets, with a bigger-than-forecasted deficit, putting the country's credit rating at risk of downgrade.


2024 snap legislative election

On 9 June 2024, following the results of the 2024 European Parliament elections in which his centrist grouping received only 14.6% of the votes, finishing nearly 17 points behind Le Pen's RN party, Macron unexpectedly dissolved the National Assembly and called for an early legislative election to be held on 30 June and 7 July 2024. In the first round of the election, on 30 June, Macron's grouping received only 20.04% of the votes nationwide, placing third well behind the hard-right RN (33.15%) and the left-wing NFP alliance (27.99%), which constituted the worst electoral performance for a governing coalition in a general election since the start of the modern French Republic in 1870. Exit polls released shortly after 8pm on 30 June suggested the RN-led alliance was on course to win either a plurality of seats or an outright majority in the second round, while Macron's coalition was set to lose at least half of the seats it won in 2022. In the second round, on 7 July, Macron was handed another hung parliament with the left-wing coalition unexpectedly winning a plurality of seats though 90 to 100 seats short of an overall majority, leaving the left theoretically unable to form a government on its own. Macron's grouping lost both 86 seats and its status as the largest parliamentary bloc while the RN-led alliance, though dramatically underperforming the polls, still managed to make significant gains, eventually becoming the largest single party in the new National Assembly. The results presented unprecedented potential for political crisis and parliamentary gridlock. Shortly after exit polls were released on the night of 7 July, Macron's Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, announced he would tender his resignation to the President. The following day, Macron refused Attal's resignation, instead asking him to stay on until a new government could be formed. On 27 August, Macron refused to appoint NFP-designate Lucie Castets as prime minister. After holding talks with leaders from parties represented in Parliament in an effort to find a working majority, Macron appointed conservative figure Michel Barnier as Prime Minister on 5 September and invited him to form a "unity government". Barnier's appointment was seen as a growing sign of Le Pen's influence on French politics since she had previously blocked the appointment of
Xavier Bertrand Xavier René Louis Bertrand (; born 21 March 1965) is a French politician; he is president of the regional council of Hauts-de-France since the 2015 regional elections. Earlier in his career, Bertrand was Minister of Health from 2005 to 2007 ...
, another conservative figure seen as a serious contender for the premiership.


=Vote of no-confidence in the Barnier government

= In early December 2024, Prime Minister Michel Barnier resorted to Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the 2025 Social Security budget without parliamentary approval. In response to Barnier's move, the National Assembly approved a vote of no confidence on 4 December, effectively bringing down the government. Barnier resigned, but Macron vowed to stay in office until the end of his term. It was the first French cabinet to be toppled by Parliament since 1962. Macron addressed the country on 5 December. He accepted the resignation of Barnier but vowed to remain in office until the end of his term. He blamed an alliance of 'extreme left and extreme right' for the collapse of the French government.


Foreign affairs

On 16 June 2022, Macron visited Ukraine alongside German Chancellor
Olaf Scholz Olaf Scholz (; born 14 June 1958) is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice-Chancellor of Ge ...
and Italy's Prime Minister
Mario Draghi Mario Draghi (; born 3 September 1947) is an Italian politician, economist, academic, banker, statesman, and civil servant, who served as the prime minister of Italy from 13 February 2021 to 22 October 2022. Prior to his appointment as prime mi ...
. He met with Ukraine's President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (born 25 January 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who has served as the sixth and current president of Ukraine since 2019. He took office five years after the start of the Russo-Ukraini ...
and expressed "European Unity" for Ukraine. He said that the nations that remained neutral in the
Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...
made a historic mistake and were complicit in the
new imperialism In History, historical contexts, New Imperialism characterizes a period of Colonialism, colonial expansion by European powers, the American imperialism, United States, and Empire of Japan, Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ...
. In September 2022, Macron criticized the United States,
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
and other "friendly" natural gas supplier states for the extremely high prices of their supplies, saying in October 2022 that Europeans are "paying four times as much as the price at which you sell to your industry. That is not exactly the meaning of friendship." Macron and his wife attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, London, on 19 September 2022, and the coronation of King Charles III the following year. On 23 October 2022, Macron became the first foreign leader to meet new Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni Giorgia Meloni (; born 15 January 1977) is an Italian politician who has served as Prime Minister of Italy since 2022. She is the first woman to hold the office. A member of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy), Chamber of Deputies since 2006, s ...
, just a day after she and her ministers were sworn into office. During a summit to China with European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen (; ; born 8 October 1958) is a German politician, serving as president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the Cabinet of Germany, German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding position ...
, which included a formal meeting with
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
, the
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party The general secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party ( zh, s=中国共产党中央委员会总书记, p=Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Wěiyuánhuì Zǒngshūjì) is the leader of the Chinese Communist Part ...
and
President of China The president of China, officially the president of the People's Republic of China, is the List of state representatives of the People's Republic of China, state representative of the China, People's Republic of China. On its own, it is a Fig ...
, Macron called for Europe to reduce its dependence on the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
in general and to stay neutral and avoid being drawn into any possible confrontation between the U.S. and
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
over
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
. Speaking after a three-day state visit to China, Macron emphasised his theory of strategic autonomy, suggesting that Europe could become a " third superpower". He argued that Europe should focus on boosting its own defence industries and additionally reduce its dependence on the
United States dollar The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
(USD). in a follow-up speech in
The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
to further outline his vision of strategic autonomy for Europe. On 7 June 2023, a report by the pan-European
think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...
European Council on Foreign Relations The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is a pan-European think tank with offices in seven European capitals. Launched in October 2007, it conducts research on European foreign and security policy and provides a meeting space for decis ...
(ECFR) found that most Europeans agree with Macron's views on China and the United States. In February 2023, he welcomed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Paris to normalize relations between France and
Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
, strained by the Tigray War between the Ethiopian government and
Tigray The Tigray Region (or simply Tigray; officially the Tigray National Regional State) is the northernmost Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob people, Irob and Kunama people. I ...
rebels. On 31 May 2023 Macron visited the GLOBSEC forum in Bratislava, where he again delivered a speech on European sovereignty. During the question and answer session that followed the Bratislava speech, he said that negotiating with Putin may have to take priority over any war crimes tribunal which some others, including Zelensky, wish to see. On 12 June 2023, Macron promised to deliver more ammunition, weapons and armed vehicles to help Ukrainian forces with the ongoing counter-offensive to liberate Russian- occupied southeastern
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
. At the NATO Summit in Vilnius, he promised to supply Ukraine with Scalp long-range cruise missiles to hit Russian targets deep behind the front lines. On 10 November 2023, he said that what Russia is doing in Ukraine is "imperialism and colonialism" and it was the "duty" of France and other countries to help Ukraine defend itself, but added that maybe the time will come to hold fair peace negotiations and find a solution with Russia. In June 2023 Macron hosted a global climate finance conference described by many as the new
Bretton Woods Conference The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, to ...
. The purpose is to adjust the global economy to the contemporary threats of
climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...
and hunger. One of the propositions is to offer low income countries aid instead of credit so they can use their resources for stopping climate change and poverty instead of debt payments. Macron supported the idea, but a climate activist from Uganda remarked that the promises were meaningless if at the same time Macron supported projects like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a major threat to the climate and to the drinking water of 40 million people. At the summit Macron proposed an international taxation system and
debt restructuring Debt restructuring is a process that allows a private or public company or a sovereign entity facing cash flow problems and financial distress to reduce and renegotiate its delinquent debts to improve or restore liquidity so that it can continu ...
but stressed it can have an effect only with
international cooperation In international relations, multilateralism refers to an alliance of multiple countries pursuing a common goal. Multilateralism is based on the principles of inclusivity, equality, and cooperation, and aims to foster a more peaceful, prosperous, an ...
. In July 2023, Macron postponed his planned state visit to Germany due to the ongoing Nahel M. riots. In October 2023, Macron condemned
Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...
's actions during the
Gaza war The Gaza war is an armed conflict in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel fought since 7 October 2023. A part of the unresolved Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflict, Gaza–Israel conflicts dating ...
and expressed his support to
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
and its right to self-defense. On 10 November 2023, he called for a ceasefire and urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza and killing civilians. In February 2024, during a meeting with other European states, Macron generated controversy by suggesting sending ground troops to Ukraine. On 28 May 2024, Macron gave Ukraine permission to use SCALP EG missiles against targets on Russian soil. Such usage was instructed to be limited "to neutralize military sites from which missiles are being fired, military sites from which Ukraine is being attacked". On 24 February 2025, during a meeting with US President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
, Macron said that a truce between Ukraine and Russia could be agreed in the coming weeks. In February 2025, Macron characterised Russia as an "existential threat" to Europe, convening a special meeting in Paris to coordinate European responses under the Weimar+ framework. In March 2025, German lawmakers approved an amendment to the Basic Law that would allow
Friedrich Merz Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz (; ; born 11November 1955) is a German politician serving as Chancellor of Germany since 6 May 2025. He has also served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since January 2022, leading the CDU/CSU ...
's government to implement the most massive rearmament of Germany since
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Germany's decision to massively increase defense spending was welcomed by Macron. Following the Israeli strikes on Iran on 13 June 2025, Macron called for "maximum restraint" while reaffirming "Israel's right to defend itself and ensure its security."


Controversies


=Uber Files

= On 10 July 2022, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' revealed that Macron had assisted Uber in lobbying during his term as the Minister of Economics and Industry, leading to calls from opposition lawmakers for a parliamentary inquiry. In his own defence, Macron expressed that he "did his job" and that he would "do it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow". He stated, "I'm proud of it".


Co-prince of Andorra

As president of France, Macron also serves ''ex officio'' as one of the two co-princes of
Andorra Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a Sovereignty, sovereign landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees in Southwestern Europe, Andorra–France border, bordered by France to the north and Spain to A ...
. His chief of staff Patrick Strzoda serves as his representative in this capacity. Joan Enric Vives i Sicília, appointed as the
Bishop of Urgell The Diocese of Urgell (; ) is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Catalonia (Spain) and the Principality of Andorra in the historical County of Urgell,Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat succeeded him in 2025. Macron swore the Constitution of Andorra through Strzoda in an act that took place on 15 June 2017 in Casa de la Vall. Macron visited the country on a State visit on 12 September 2019. The following day he spoke at the historic building of the
General Council of Andorra The General Council (, ) is the unicameral parliament of Andorra. It is sometimes referred to as the General Council of the Valleys (Catalan: ''Consell General de les Valls'') because it was the historical name and to distinguish it from sim ...
alongside Episcopal Co-Prince Joan Enric Vives, Prime Minister Xavier Espot and the General Syndic Roser Suñé Pascuet. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Andorran government asked France for economic aid, but Macron refused, arguing that the
Bank of France The Bank of France ( ) is the national central bank for France within the Eurosystem. It was the French central bank between 1800 and 1998, issuing the French franc. It does not translate its name to English, and thus calls itself ''Banque de F ...
could not offer loans to another country without the approval of the
European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's Big Four (banking)#International ...
. In January 2024, former New Caledonian high commissioner Patrice Faure was appointed chief of staff to Macron, and in November, his representative to Andorra.


Political positions


Personal life

Macron is married to Brigitte Macron, Brigitte Trogneux, his former La Providence high school teacher in Amiens close to 25 years his senior. They met during a theatre workshop that she was giving when he was a 15-year-old student and she was a 39-year-old teacher. A romantic relationship started later, and his parents attempted to separate the couple by sending him away to Paris to finish the final year of his schooling, as they felt his youth made this relationship inappropriate. (The Age of consent in Europe, age of consent in France is 15.) The couple reunited after Macron graduated, and were married in 2007. She has three children from a previous marriage; he has no children of his own. Her role in Macron's 2017 presidential campaign has been considered pivotal, with close Macron allies stating that Brigitte Macron helped him to develop skills like public speaking. His best man was Henry Hermand, a businessman who loaned €550,000 to Macron for the purchase of his first apartment in Paris when he was Inspector of Finances. Hermand also let Macron use some of his offices on the Champs Élysées, Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris for his movement En Marche. In the 2002 French presidential election, Macron voted for Souverainism, souverainist Jean-Pierre Chevènement. In 2007, Macron voted for Ségolène Royal in the second round of the 2007 French presidential election, presidential election. During the French Socialist Party presidential primary, 2011, Socialist Party primary in 2011, Macron voiced his support for
François Hollande François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
. Macron plays the piano, and studied piano for ten years in his youth. He especially enjoys the work of Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. Macron also skis, plays tennis and enjoys boxing. In addition to his native French, Macron speaks fluent English. In August 2017, a photojournalist was arrested and detained by the police for six hours after he entered the private residence where Macron was vacationing in Marseille. Macron subsequently filed a complaint for "harassment". In September 2017, he dropped the complaint "as a gesture of appeasement". On 27 August 2017, Macron and his wife Brigitte adopted Nemo (dog), Nemo, a black Labrador Retriever-Griffon dog who lives with them in the Élysée Palace. As a schoolboy, Macron decided to be baptised as a Catholic. In June 2018, prior to meeting Pope Francis, he identified himself as an Lapsed Catholic, agnostic Catholic. In the same year he agreed to become an honorary canon of St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome. A fan of association football, football, Macron is a supporter of French club Olympique de Marseille. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, 2018 World Cup, he attended the semi-final between France national football team, France and Belgium national football team, Belgium with the Belgian Philippe of Belgium, King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, and at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, World Cup final against Croatia national football team, Croatia, he sat and celebrated alongside Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. Macron received widespread media attention for his celebrations and his interactions with the Croatian president.Multiple sources: * * * * *


Honours and decorations


National honours


Foreign honours


Prizes

* ''Le Trombinoscope'' (2014, 2016) * Charlemagne Prize (2018) * Champions of the Earth, Champion of the Earth (2018) * (2024)


Publications

* *


Notes


References


Further reading

* Chamorel, Patrick. "Macron versus the yellow vests". ''Journal of Democracy'' 30.4 (2019): 48–62. . * Chopin, Thierry.
Emmanuel Macron, France and Europe 'France is back in Europe': on which terms
. (Fondation Robert Schuman, 2018). * Chopin, Thierry, and Samuel BH Faure.

. ''Intereconomics'' 2021.2 (2021): 75–81. * Cole, Alistair. ''Emmanuel Macron and the two years that changed France.'' (Manchester University Press, 2020). * Elgie, Robert. "The election of Emmanuel Macron and the new French party system: a return to the éternel marais?". ''Modern & Contemporary France'' 26.1 (2018): 15–29. * Hewlett, Nick. "The phantom revolution. The presidential and parliamentary elections of 2017". ''Modern & Contemporary France'' 25.4 (2017): 377–390. * Kutsenko, Andrii.
Emmanuel Macron and Franco-Russian relations at the present stage
. ''Political Science and Security Studies Journal'' 1.1 (2020): 94–100. . * * Nougayrède, Natalie. "France's Gamble: As America Retreats, Macron Steps up". ''Foreign Affairs'' 96 (2017): 2+ * Pedder, Sophie. ''Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the quest to reinvent a nation'' (Bloomsbury, 2018). * Perottino, Michel, and Guasti, Petra.
Technocratic populism à la française? The roots and mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron's success
. ''Politics and Governance'' 8.4 (2020): 545–555. . * Tiersky, Ronald. "Macron's World: How the New President Is Remaking France". ''Foreign Affairs''. 97 (2018): 87+.


External links

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