Swift, smart and typically self-assured, Emmanuel Macron’s response to Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate accords confirmed a near-faultless debut on the international stage for France’s new president, analysts said.
“Make our planet great again,” Macron, a diplomatic novice not yet 40, exhorted the world, recycling Trump’s own slogan in an unprecedented address partly in English from the Elysée Palace soon after the US president had informed the world he was withdrawing from the global agreement on Thursday.
The phrase, tweeted minutes later as a graphic that rapidly went viral, was accompanied by a renewed invitation to US scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs disappointed by their administration’s move to “come to France and work with us together” on climate solutions.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 1, 2017
“It was adroitly done,” said Thomas Gomart, the director of the French Institute for International Relations. “It showed a self-confidence, even a form of insolence … In terms of foreign relations, the early stages of Macron’s presidency have undeniably been a success.”
Macron’s brisk three-minute intervention on Thursday night won him praise on social media both abroad – where he was compared favourably to Trump – and at home, where it was widely and only half-jokingly suggested he should change his title to “leader of the free world”.
From his muscular handshake with Trump before last week’s Nato meeting in Brussels to his “extremely frank and direct” exchange with Russia’s Vladmir Putin in Versailles, the French president, less than a month into his mandate, has shown “boldness … agility and timing”, said the daily Libération.
Strategically, in a world of Trump and Putin, with ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and the EU weakened by Brexit, Macron aims to restore and amplify France’s global voice at the heart of a stronger Europe based on a revival of the critical postwar relationship between Paris and Berlin.
Alive to the importance of symbols and images, his style is at times purposely theatrical. Macron is determined to “rehabilitate the role of the president”, Gomart said, after what many saw as the vulgarity of Nicolas Sarkozy and the exaggerated normality of François Hollande.
“So what we see is a convergence between this young president who is the incarnation of a form of modernity, and these symbols that resonate with the French, these references to France’s history,” Gomart said. “Don’t forget parliamentary elections are not far away.”
French and international media had a field day with the Trump-Macron handshake, in which the 39-year-old French leader squeezed his much older US counterpart’s hand so hard that Trump’s knuckles whitened and he was eventually forced to relinquish his grip.
Macron later admitted the move had “not been innocent” and was “a moment of truth”, describing Trump, Putin and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as men who see relationships “in terms of a balance of power” and to whom it was vital “not to grant even small concessions”.
Much was also made of his public admonishment of Putin on Monday. With the Russian president at his side in the gilded splendour of the Palace of Versailles, Macron warned France would show “no weakness” if chemical weapons were used in Syria, would be “constantly vigilant” on gay rights in Chechnya, and expected the Minsk agreements on Ukraine to be implemented.
He also said firmly that Russia Today and Sputnik, two Kremlin-funded news outlets, had behaved “like agents of influence and propaganda” that had repeatedly “spread serious untruths” about him during his election campaign.
Polls suggest the approach is proving effective with French voters. Macron’s new political movement, La République En Marche, is on target for a 30% share of the national vote in next month’s elections – a 10-point advance since his arrival in the Elysée last month.
An Ipsos poll this week suggested the cross-party movement could win between 395 and 425 seats in the lower house of parliament, comfortably above the 289 it would need to secure an absolute majority in 577-seat national assembly.
But there were suggestions on Friday that Macron’s style may have backfired in one respect: the Washington Post reported that alongside intense EU pressure on Trump over the climate accord, agreed in the French capital in 2015, the younger leader’s tough stance could just have confirmed Trump in his intentions.
Macron’s words “irritated and bewildered” the US president, the paper quoted unnamed White House aides as saying, and may have helped inspire his comment on Thursday that he “was elected to serve the citizens of Pittsburgh – not Paris”.
