Second Macron presidency
# Second Macron presidency

The second presidency of Emmanuel Macron began on 14 May 2022 after he was reelected president of France in the 2022 presidential election. Macron won with 58.55 % of the votes in the run-off against National Rally leader Marine Le Pen.

## History

### 2022 French presidential election

Macron formally announced his candidacy for re-election on 3rd March 2022, after delaying his announcement mostly due to the outbreak of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After a short campaign begun only 38 days before the country was due to go to the polls, on 10 April, Macron topped the first round of the 2022 French presidential election with 27.8% of the votes, well ahead of RN candidate Marine Le Pen who finished 2nd with 23.2% of the votes.

In the second round, on 24 April, Emmanuel Macron went on to beat Le Pen and was therefore reelected as President of France with 58.55% of the votes.

On 7 May, Macron was re-inaugurated as President at the Élysée Palace. His presidential second term began on 14 May 2022.

### New government and parliamentary elections

On 16 May 2022, Macron appointed Elisabeth Borne, his then Minister of Labour and Employment, as Prime Minister to replace Jean Castex at the Hôtel Matignon. Borne, the second female head of Government in French history, then formed a government on 20 May.

Just under a month into its appointment, the Borne government fought the 2022 French legislative elections that took place on the 12 and 19 June. Throughout the campaign, Macron's administration faced several political controversies such as rape accusations against the newly-appointed Minister for the Solidarity Damien Abad and the 2022 UEFA Champions League final chaos and its handling that drew widespread criticism at home and abroad.

In the first round, Macron's Ensemble coalition finished 1st, but almost tied with the left-wing NUPES coalition in the popular vote (25.8% vs. 25.7%). The National Rally (RN) came in third, with 18.7% of the votes.

In the second round, the presidential coalition unexpectedly lost its parliamentary majority and the legislative elections resulted in a hung parliament for the first time since 1988. Macron's bloc, which had a 115-seat majority going into the election, was now 38 seats short of an overall majority. Thus, the parliamentary elections, which had ended in triumph for Macron in 2017, left the President and his Cabinet severely weakened in 2022.

Moreover, 2 senior ministers and 1 junior minister lost their seats in the parliamentary elections and therefore had to resign: Brigitte Bourguignon (Health), Amélie de Montchalin (Ecological Transition) and Justine Bénin (junior minister for the Sea). Crucially, three close political allies to President Macron were also 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 decimating Macron's parliamentary bloc leadership and further weakening the President's political position in hung parliament territory.

On 4 July, after talks with opposition parties failed, Macron reshuffled the Cabinet and Prime Minister Borne officially formed a minority government. This minority administration, which only has 251 seats in the National Assembly, a figure well below the 289-threshold needed to command a working majority in the lower house, can be considered to be the weakest Cabinet in the history of the French Fifth Republic from a parliamentary standpoint.

### Domestic policy

Despite its minority status in legislature, Macron's administration has passed many bills through Parliament, mainly at the cost of having to bargain with opposition parties and shortening the bills' length.

In the summer of 2022, France's hung parliament passed a 20-billion euros "purchase power package", a bill ending the Covid "health emergency state" and an amending Government Budget.

In November 2022, the Macron government reformed the French unemployment insurance.

Since then, Macron's government has passed bills to advance renewable energies and to revive the French nuclear sector amid the global energy crisis.

In late 2022, the Government's Public Finances programming Bill was defeated in Parliament. This leaves questions about whether France will be able to benefit from the European Covid recovery funds in the near future as a parliamentary-approved pluriannual public finances' trajectory is a prerequisite to benefit from such crucial funds.

Nonetheless, the Government had to resort to the constitutional Article 49.3 on multiple occasions: in October and November 2022 to pass the Government Budget and the Social Security Budget, and in March 2023 to break the parliamentary deadlock over a controversial pension reform bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Moreover, on 20 March 2023, Macron's Cabinet narrowly survived a cross-party motion of no confidence by only 9 votes, with 278 MPs voting against his government over the use of constitutional article 49.3 to force through the 2023 pension reform bill in the National Assembly.

In June 2023, the lower house passed the Government's 2024-2030 Military Planning Bill in first reading, a bill which would increase the French military budget to a historic level of 413 billion euros cumulated over the 7-year period.

Additionally, Macron's administration has had to postpone a highly controversial Immigration & Asylum bill several times, in part because the executive branch fears no majority can be found on a such a "hot" political topic. However, talks with opposition parties, mainly with the centre-right to right-wing Republicans (LR), on the bill are planned in the summer of 2023 and the government currently schedules for introducing that legislation in the autumn of this year.

On 12 June 2023, Macron's Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Borne, survived its 17th motion of no-confidence since the beginning of the 16th legislature: the motion, brought forward by left-wing NUPES coalition in response to the use of constitutional article 40 to block an opposition-sponsored amendment reintroducing the 62-year retirement age on the centrist LIOT group's opposition day, was defeated with only 239 votes, 50 votes short of the 289-threshold required to overthrow the government.

In early Summer 2023, French authorities faced growing riots following the killing of Nahel M., aged 17, by a police officer during a traffic stop. The 17-year-old was shot and killed in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, on 27 June. Racial unrest spread across the Paris region and some of France's largest cities over the following days. On 29 June, after the second night of violence that resulted in over 150 arrests and multiple destructions, President Macron chaired an inter-ministerial crisis meeting and his government ordered 40,000 police officers, including elite tactical units, to be deployed across the country in an effort to stem the violence later that day. Nonetheless, widespread violence, looting et rioting continued over the following days, reaching and, in some places, even overtaking levels of unrest last seen during 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 coming from the Justice Ministry advising courts to apply harsher sentences and sped-up procedures to rioters put on trial: 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.

On 20 July 2023, Macron carried out a government reshuffle 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: amid little legislative progress on his top domestic priorities having been made over the period and the continued lack of a working majority in Parliament since the 2022 election, media reports emerged of a potential change of Prime Minister in the Summer. Nonetheless, on 17 July 2023, Macron asked Borne to remain in office and invited her to make proposals for a "technical" reshuffle. 3 days later, 8 new ministers were appointed, 3 senior Cabinet ministers (Education, Health and Solidarity) and 5 junior ministers. Notably, National Education and Youth Minister Pap Ndiaye, whose appointment drew vocal criticism about his alleged "woke" ideological inclinations from right-wing parties and politicians in May 2022, and State Secretary to the PM Marlène Schiappa, a prominent figure of the Macron Presidency since her initial appointment in 2017 and whose handling of the "Marianne Funds" to combat Islamist extremism as junior minister for Citizenship in 2021 came under public and parliamentary scrutiny in recent months, were sacked as part of the reshuffle.

