Emmanuel Macron, Face of France’s New Socialism
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Around 9 p.m. on a recent weeknight, all the lights in Emmanuel Macron’s cavernous offices at the French Economy Ministry were blazing. A coterie of energetic 30-something aides scurried through the hallways, fingers tapping at their iPhones as stacks of takeout dinners circulated on trays. If not for his aura of authority, Mr. Macron might easily have been mistaken for one of his employees. The 36-year-old former investment banker, whom President François Hollande appointed in August to oversee the economy, had just ended another marathon day of meetings that began at 7 a.m. Yet his tailored suit was unrumpled and his auburn hair still perfectly in place. “We have a very long day here, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” Mr. Macron said, settling onto a black couch. “France is sick,” he said, “and we are facing difficult times. We have no choice but to reform this country.” A decade ago, Mr. Macron might have seemed out of place in these halls of power, which have tended to be run by elder statesmen focused on bolstering the vaunted French welfare state. But as one of the youngest people ever to hold a cabinet position, he has quickly become the face of France’s New Socialism, a pro-business technocrat bent on modernizing the country’s social model. Despite his youth, Mr. Macron has been a major force behind a recent shift by the politically struggling Mr. Hollande toward a more centrist economic policy for France. The economy is essentially stagnant and mired in what Mr. Macron describes as “mass unemployment” — around 10 percent, just shy of the 11.5 percent eurozone average. As part of the Hollande government’s newly stated resolve, last week it issued a “no austerity” declaration of budgetary independence from the German-led orthodoxy that has been widely blamed for making economic growth hard to achieve in much of the eurozone. Even as it announced 50 billion euros ($63 billion) in spending cuts over the next three years, the government said it would not meet the deficit targets overseen by the European Union until at least 2017. Essentially daring Brussels, the Hollande government indicated it intends to start charting its own economic course, in ways meant to retain many of the country’s social programs, while sharply increasing its global competitiveness. On Monday, news reports suggested that the European Commission might be preparing to censure France when it reviews its new budget. But Simon O’Connor, a commission spokesman, said it was premature to say how Brussels might respond, until after France formally submits the budget, which is expected on Oct. 15. In many ways it is Mr. Macron’s job to help sell the Hollande administration’s new approach — not only to corporate France but to a French public worried about its future. “France is a strong, wealthy country,” he said, citing a strong research and development base, universal education, large foreign investment and world-class companies. “But we are always obsessed by our own weaknesses,” he continued. “It’s sort of a French state of mind.” Mr. Macron, who worked in New York for a brief stint during his four years as a banker with the Rothschild Group, draws inspiration from entrepreneurial hotbeds like Silicon Valley, which he visited this summer with his wife and three children, basking in what he called its “crazy, positive, can-do mentality.” Still, even as he means to help Mr. Hollande push an ambitious but politically perilous drive to brand France as a country that is open for business and unafraid of globalization, he does not want his country to lose its innate egalitarian Frenchness. “I don’t believe that killing the French model in order to become the U.K. or the United States overnight is the solution,” he said. “You have a big debate on inequality there, and for our society, a lot of inequality would not be bearable.” That has forced Mr. Macron to walk a fine line ever since Mr. Hollande rang his cellphone in late August to ask if he would take the job of economy minister. French business leaders cheered the news, seeing in Mr. Macron a new hope for reform. “We speak a common language,” Laurence Parisot, the former head of the French employers association Medef, said at the time. But there was a wariness bordering on outrage among the most left-leaning Socialists and from unions. They viewed Mr. Hollande’s ouster of Arnaud Montebourg, the former economy minister who had battled big business, and replacing him with Mr. Macron, as a betrayal of the welfare state. “Installing a banker while our country is suffering from the domination of finance is not a good sign,” said Jean-Marc Germain, a Socialist member of Parliament. It did not help that Mr. Macron made a major faux pas right out of the gate, in a radio interview, referring to the plight of “illiterate” workers at a factory that was closing in northern France, because they would have few other options. The remark, though perhaps well intentioned, deepened an impression that he was out of touch with the Socialist base. The French news media was quick with labels, calling Mr. Macron “the Right Brain of Hollande” — a reference to his right-leaning economic influence on the president. “Les Guignols de l’info,” a satirical political puppet show, caricatured Mr. Macron as a crying baby, a swipe at his youth and perceived political inexperience. But Mr. Macron’s supporters say he is no callow upstart. “He has an amazing expertise, a political mind, and is modern and liberal in his thinking,” said Jacques Attali, an influential French economist and an adviser to several presidents. “He also wants to fight inequality, and he cares about the impact on civil society.” Mr. Macron met Mr. Hollande in 2007 during a party at Mr. Attali‘s home, and the two men hit it off. At the time, Mr. Macron had just done a surprising about-face from an early career in academic philosophy, working with the late Paul Ricoeur, an eminent French philosopher who focused on human consciousness. Mr. Macron obtained a master’s degree after partly focusing his studies on Machiavelli, which, he said with a smile, was good background for navigating the power politics of Paris. He entered the École Nationale d’Administration, the training ground for France’s governmental elite, pausing in 2007 to marry his former high school French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, who is 20 years his senior. In 2008, he was snapped up by Rothschild, working mainly in Paris, a job that made him a millionaire. When Mr. Hollande ran successfully for the presidency in 2012, he campaigned on a classic leftist platform that promised greater security for the middle class and higher taxes on the wealthy. But behind the scenes, he called on Mr. Macron as an informal adviser to assure the business community that he was also open to reforms that would help companies create jobs and lift France from moribund growth. Mr. Macron’s first move was to urge Mr. Hollande to drop a proposal to tax incomes above €1 million at 75 percent, warning it would damage France’s image and turn the country into “Cuba without the sun.” Instead, Mr. Hollande forged ahead, spending two years trying to burnish his Socialist credentials instead of tackling the reforms that both men knew were needed, Mr. Macron said. As the French economy continued to flag, Mr. Hollande made Mr. Macron his main economic adviser at the Élysée Palace in 2012. This time, he pushed the president hard to break with the “old socialism,” helping to draft a so-called Responsibility Pact that increased flexibility in France’s rigid labor market and promised companies €40 billion in tax breaks in exchange for pledges to do more hiring. Now, what is important, Mr. Macron said, as a late train from the nearby Gare de Lyon rumbled beneath his window, is that France continue to streamline and modernize the welfare state. “For me being a Socialist today is about defending the unemployed, but also defending businessmen who want to create a company, and those who need jobs,” he said. “We have to shift the social model from a lot of formal protections toward loosening bottlenecks in the economy.” That will be no easy task. Numerous French presidents have rolled out reform plans, only to fold after the French took to the streets. Last week, thousands marched against Mr. Hollande’s plans to reduce social spending and open the economy to greater competition. What if Mr. Hollande, already the most unpopular president in modern French history, now decides to retreat? Mulling the question, Mr. Macron lifted a glass of Burgundy wine, a pleasure that he permitted himself given the late hour, then grew suddenly serious. “The deal I had with the president and the prime minister was to deliver. If they decide not to deliver, I will move.” He continued: “But I do think that there is a strong conviction that there is no choice but to reform this country. It will probably be painful, and perhaps we will fail in the end. But France will succeed.” |