Macron Fires Ambassador Who Attacked His Pension Plan

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/world/europe/segolene-royal-macron.html

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PARIS — A former presidential candidate and longtime star of the French center left was fired as her country’s ambassador to the North and South Poles on Friday after mounting repeated attacks on one of President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship policies.

Ségolène Royal, who was the Socialist Party’s unsuccessful candidate in the 2007 French presidential election and later a senior official under the presidency of her former partner, François Hollande, was appointed to the diplomatic post by Mr. Macron in 2017.

In recent weeks, however, she has engaged in an increasingly messy public confrontation with Mr. Macron’s administration — including over the process of her own impending dismissal — and faced the news that public prosecutors were investigating whether she had used Foreign Ministry funds for unrelated work, an accusation she denies.

“The Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs proposed that Ségolène Royal no longer hold the position of Poles ambassador,” Sibeth Ndiaye, the French government’s spokeswoman, said on Friday.

Ms. Royal’s response has been to announce a new centrist movement of her own, perhaps to challenge Mr. Macron in the 2022 elections.

The diplomatic post Ms. Royal held was an unconventional one, which made her responsible for France’s interests in two regions where it has little to no influence, even as superpowers are increasingly jockeying for Arctic energy resources.

France has no Arctic territory. Its closest point to the North Pole stands just a few kilometers from Dunkirk, in northern France. Within the Arctic Council, which comprises Arctic states such as the United States, Canada and Russia, France is limited to an observer status that leaves little room for maneuver.

To many, Ms. Royal’s appointment was a scanty consolation prize for a former environment minister who once took a leading role in United Nations climate negotiations.

“They did not give me much,” Ms. Royal said in a telephone interview.

Ms. Royal said it had been Mr. Macron’s pension reform, which prompted hundreds of thousands of protesters to hit the streets, that had convinced her to speak her mind about the government she was expected to serve with discretion. “Macron is unable to listen to social anger,” she said.

In December, she declared in a radio interview that women had “no reason to trust this government” over its pension proposals.

When Mr. Macron promised to renounce his presidential pension, she asked on Twitter if, as a former investment banker, he would instead return to “the globalized business world with its enormous golden handshakes.”

After weeks of criticism, the French government grew annoyed.

“Ségolène Royal will have to make a choice. Either she wants to remain ambassador and obviously there is a duty of discretion, or she wants to keep her freedom of speech,” the environment minister, Élisabeth Borne, told the news channel BFM on Jan. 12. “In that case, she must no longer be an ambassador.”

Two days later, Ms. Royal posted on Facebook a photo of a letter she had received from the foreign and environment ministries, warning her that the cabinet would shortly discuss terminating her position “in view of your recent public statements challenging the government’s policy.”

The next day, French prosecutors announced the investigation into Ms. Royal over her use of ambassadorial funds.

But these back-to-back announcements, instead of putting an end to Ms. Royal’s political career, proved an unexpected springboard to revive it — at least temporarily.

Brought back under the limelight, Ms. Royal announced her own political movement which she described as a “third way,” echoing Macron’s words during the last presidential election.

“I’m afraid there is no space for her at all,” said Gérard Grunberg, a political scientist at Sciences Po, who noted that her program resembled that of the Socialist Party, which she left in 2017. “It’s a last-ditch attempt to bounce back, but I think her time is over.”

Asked about the coincidence between her starting the movement and her dismissal, Ms. Royal said that she “had the intuition that it was time to fight back.”

“It’s called political talent!”