The candidate is already two hours late. The suspected Russian poison gas attack in Ukraine stopped him. Actually, Emmanuel Macron is supposed to meet with doctors and nurses at the Mulhouse hospital for a round table this Tuesday afternoon. But before he enters the building, he turns and sprints toward the crowd across the street.
Eleven days until the runoff. The President won the first round, almost without campaigning. Now it’s up against Marine Le Pen, the right-wing extremist who wants to turn France and Europe upside down. It will probably be very close. Macron urgently needs to get to the people.
The first one behind the barrier is a tough one. A nurse, 61, deeply disappointed in politics. He heals people, but earns far too little, he complains. “I had 1,860 euros last month,” and the working conditions are miserable. These are bitter words, because the Alsace city of Mulhouse was an early hotspot of the pandemic in 2020, and the military had to set up a tent hospital right here because of the many patients. Has nothing improved?
The man talks himself into a rage, waves his finger, becomes more and more intrusive. Macron remains friendly and calm, doesn’t flinch, he leans forward on the bars and fixes his eyes on the person opposite. And begins to explain what he has done and what he still plans to do to improve healthcare. Gradually the aggression dissipates, and a 15-minute conversation ensues, a dialogue.
He likes to take the cheering of his fans with him – but he wants to win new voters
Macron knows that it doesn’t depend on this one voter. But a dozen cameras and microphones surround him, they will broadcast this and many similar encounters, for which the candidate takes a conspicuous amount of time that day, on the French televisions and mobile phones. When nurses cheer him on, as they did shortly afterwards, when the residents of the village of Châtenois at the foot of the Vosges and thousands chant “Macron – Président” or “Vive l’Europe” in front of Strasbourg Cathedral, he is happy to take it with him.
But he wants to win over new voters, wants to convince those who voted for the right-wing candidates in the first round. Or for the surprisingly strong left winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon – because this is where the greatest potential lies, for both Le Pen and Macron.
That’s why he drove north on Monday, to the former steel and coal district: Le Pen country. And now to the area around green-governed Strasbourg, which recorded a Mélenchon majority in the first round. According to their own statements, many voted for the left less out of conviction than out of a desire to send a signal of protest. The Élysée resident must seek confrontation with them – while remaining calm and not allowing themselves to be provoked. Even if it’s difficult, like in Châtenois, when a gray-haired man in a plaid shirt yells in his face: “You’re the most useless of all the presidents of the Fifth Republic I’ve seen!”
More importantly, the man, a factory worker, then expressed his fear of Macron’s planned pension reform, as did many that day. Macron had suspended the reform, a central point in his 2017 program, twice because of the yellow vest protests and the pandemic, and now it should finally come. The French retire comparatively early, he wants to overturn the many special rights for individual professional groups, raise the entry age from 62 to 65 years and thus finance other benefits such as an increase in the basic pension to 1100 euros. The money has to come from somewhere, says Macron, the liberal: “You can’t distribute wealth that you haven’t created.”
His unpopular pension reform? You have to take the “political context” into account
But these plans are also by far the biggest obstacle to voice fishing on the left, which is why Macron rowed back strongly on Monday, again. He is ready to discuss “the rhythm and the cornerstones” of the reform with all political forces, anyway at the age of 65 that would not be implemented until 2030 at the earliest, a referendum is possible and also a “review clause”. The ambitious project, which would bring France’s pension system closer to that of Germany, can only be implemented in a weaker version, if at all. People around Macron say that the “political context” shouldn’t be ignored. Maybe it’s the move that will secure him re-election.
The head of the Rassemblement National is now stepping up her efforts all the more, it’s like ping-pong between the two. When Le Pen’s team found out on Monday that Macron was going on tour and where he was going, they immediately changed the program and booked a visit to a grain farmer in Burgundy. Macron will now work on the topic of ecology and agriculture on Thursday. And when Le Pen excluded journalists from the political entertainment show “Quotidien” who were critical of her from a press conference, Macron immediately warned against “drifting into authoritarianism”.