“Far right and far left come from very different movements. But, with respect to the Republican camp, they propose simplistic and counter-truth answers that cultivate fears. Their relationship with our Republic and its values is one of marginality “. The outgoing French president, Emmanuel Macron, is playing his second term at the polls on Sunday, and is keeping away from French bipopulism.
In an interview granted to Le Figaro and reported by Repubblica, Macron wants to create a clear line of separation between himself and the three populist candidates Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, expression of a policy that the leader of En Marche has always tried to remove, since the first election campaign of 2017.
After 5 years at the Elysée, however, these extremisms do not seem defeated. On the contrary. «In the field of immigration, the results are insufficient, but we have strengthened the protection of borders and tightened the conditions for entry into our territory in a context in which flows have increased considerably following the deterioration of the international context. An anxiety was born about this: I could not calm it down and it fed a lot to extremist parties. But our country is not submerged, as some claim, and “zero immigration” is neither realistic nor desirable, ”says Macron.
If extremisms still have a great consensus – too much – among the French, the traditional parties, the more moderate ones, are struggling to stay in the game. For Macron it is a problem of definition, in the sense that the classic opposition between right and left is no longer current: «It no longer corresponds to the expectations of the French, who want fewer false divisions and more concrete answers. This is why I deeply believe in overcoming divisions and in unity. The two old big republican parties have become parties of local elected officials. What we have been doing since 2017 is a grouping of social democracy, of the ecology of progress that rejects degrowth, of the political center, of the radicals, of the Orleanist right and of a part of the liberal and Bonapartist right ”.
A solution to the new needs and the new reality presented by the French political framework could be that of a proportional system that breaks the classic scheme of semi-presidentialism. «I think that proportional representation has an advantage – explains the Head of the Elysée – it allows the tensions that exist in society within Parliament to emerge. But I am in favor on condition that it does not paralyze the executive ».
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