THE FRENCH MIRACLE MAN DIMINISHED

The result of the French elections for Parliament is disappointing for President Macron. The Left and also the Right won a considerable amount of votes, while he lost the needed absolute majority. All this doesn't bode well for his ambitious agenda. Neither will it help him retaining his international aura. Like other democracies in the West, France will have to deal now with the sabotage coming from the inside.

Europe should worry because existing alliances and partnerships will come under pressure both from the French Left and the Right. Oligopoly situations might lead to a perverse blockade of reform and innovation. The ideas of LePen are nefarious. The agenda of Mélenchon is nihilistic. Europe, the Markets and the Atlantic world need a creative operator like Macron to stem opportunistic fallacies that might well derail what is left of enlightened governance.

France joins, for now, Germany and the United States "in search of lost time."  Tragically this is not about a novel but about the structural component of the life as we knew it, or as we wish for. The cracks in the rule of law and social justice could multiply. Events in Eastern Europe and the coming winter plague could exacerbate climate change together with a major food and markets/energy crisis. The West has no leader who can inspire as Macron does. Unlike President Biden, he can go everywhere without awakening the ghost of Canossa. The opposition of Left and Right will stop at nothing to curtail his initiatives.

France remains a strong country, mine de rien. The French are quick to realize where and when they erred. Still it has to be hoped that they spare themselves the periodic catastrophic outburst they were used to. The more so, that Macron is not deGaulle, who preferred the shore of Ireland rather than dealing with the disputable choice of his countrymen.  Macron would not.