Emmanuel Macron who is seeking a second term as president of France this Sunday is very different from the one who in 2017 wooed the country as a candidate almost came from outside politics to settle on the Elysee.

The one who was the youngest man (no female president) to reach head of state in 2017 at the age of 39, lost a good portion of his political capital during his significant five -year term at the Elysee.

A serious crisis within the country (the “yellow vest” protests) and two more internationally (the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine) weighed heavily on an order in which the controversies did not stop.

In the distance seemed the politician with a young and attractive appearance, who attracted the French and went from almost unknown to occupying the Head of State.

If then Macron had promised a “revolution” with very ambitious change, now he is content to continue the course he has taken, with reforms such as pensions and more modest goals and tone.

Experience in the face of crises

His current figure is an experienced technocrat proposing to continue piloting the country with a definite hand, very different to the newcomer whose no party took over the political skies in 2017.

“There will be more crises” and with the arrival of the French “they will have a definite idea of ​​how I will act,” Macron said in presenting his program, a more technical than outrageous compendium of proposals.

True to its purpose open the third way between conservatives and socialistscombined measures on the right (such as eliminating the wealth tax or the promise to raise the retirement age) on the other left (such as generous subsidies for layers most sensitive to rising energy or basic product prices) .

But its most notable proposal is possibly the “whatever it takes” approach in which the State has injected large amounts of money to support companies forced to close during 2020/21 sanitary confinements and pay the salaries of those they cannot work.

A defender of the fight against climate change and of Ukraine after the invasion, Macron has exercised important leadership both in the European Union (EU) and around the world, aiming to maintain France’s outstanding position in the world.

In the EU, it became Angela Merkel’s addition to the Franco-German axis and, after the change of government in Germany, it took on the leading role, taking advantage of the foreign inexperience of the new head of the German government, Olaf Scholz.

your trajectory

The son of doctors born in Amiens (north) although with southern roots, Macron acknowledges his passion for the Pyrenees, as his maternal grandmother was from a town near the Spanish community of Aragon.

He was trained, like many other French leaders, in the National School of Administration (ENA), a true incubator for the ruling class of France, an institution praised for its quality as condemned for its supposedly elitism of its graduates.

After debuting in the Administration as a tax inspector, in 2008 he joined the Rothschild business bank, with which he became a partner two years later.

From there he returned to the public sector, but at a higher level. He was the first deputy general secretary of the Elysee and then minister of economy (2014) along with socialist president François Hollande, a position he left two years later to launch his attack on the presidency.

Make a match for you (La República en Marcha, LREM) to win Legislative power and achieve an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

But the formation, which lacks territorial implantation, is not controlled by the Senate.

Addressed in a recent interview with a photo of his arrival at the Elysee, Macron, his temples illuminated by the gray hair left by the man who captured France in 2017, identified in a melancholy voice: “Afraid I’ve changed and I’m a little older. I know. ”

Source: EFE

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