Emmanuel Macron is a name most people have heard at some point in time. But who is he? What do the French people think about him? Know The Fact brings you the facts about Emmanuel Macron.

Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, simply called Emmanuel Macron, was born on December 21, 1977. He became the first French presidential candidate to win re-election since 2002 when he was elected to a second term as President of France in 2022. By being elected president at the age of 39, Emmanuel Macron became the youngest president in French history. Apart from that, he is also the youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte.

From 2006 to 2009, he was a member of the Socialist Party. When he ran for the presidential race in 2017, it was under La République En Marche! or simply En Marche! Emmanuel Macron founded the party in 2016. One of the reasons why Macron was victorious in the 2017 presidential election was the Fillon Affair. The Fillon Affair was a political scandal in which it was alleged that family members of politician Francois Fillon were provided with jobs in the government. These jobs, however, involved no or very little work.

Terms in the presidential office
As a solution to the Fillon affair, Macron proposed a law making it illegal for elected members to hire family members. A part of the law which is aimed at stopping corruption in the French political arena was passed by the National Assembly. Emmanuel Macron pledged to take action against French companies employing cheap labour from Eastern Europe instead of employing French workers. Macron’s administration fulfilled its campaign pledge to scrap the wealth tax. The wealth tax was replaced by a tax targeting real estate. In an attempt to further decrease jobs in the French Civil Services, he announced a plan to offer voluntary redundancy.
In March 2019, Macron signed 15 large-scale trade and business agreements with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. These
agreements totalled 40 billion euros ($45 billion USD), covering many sectors over the years. On November 26, 2021, Macron signed the “Quirinal Treaty” in Rome with Italian President Mario Draghi. The aim of the Treaty is to advance the assembly and coordination of French and Italian positions on issues of European and international strategies, security and protection, migration strategy, the economy, education, research, culture, and cross-line collaboration. On June 16, 2022, French President Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian President Mario Draghi visited Ukraine. There he met Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and reportedly expressed “European Unity” for Ukraine.

Controversies
Macron came under fire for his plan to provide his wife with an official role within the government. Critics labelled the plan as undemocratic and a contradiction to his fight against nepotism. Macron proposed a controversial plan to “reorganize” Islam in France to rediscover “secularism”. He did elaborate further on this ironic “plan”.

Macron
proposed yet another controversial bill with stricter anti-terror laws, criticised by human rights advocates. This involved giving authorities power to search homes, restrict movement, and close places of worship, threatening civil liberties. His marriage to Brigitte Trogneux, his former high school teacher who is 24 years his senior, is very controversial. They became a couple when he was 18 and she was 42.

The Current Situation
Emmanuel Macron is losing the support of the National Assembly. Pro-business policies, rising inequality in France, and growing public discontentment over inflation are making him unpopular, especially among left-leaning voters. Macron’s idea of raising the retirement age is a cherry on the already volatile pudding of his neo-liberal policies in his first term as president. The working classes and the vast bureaucracy are against his policies. NUPES, or New Social and Ecological People’s Union, is a left-wing coalition and Macron’s main opposition. The NUPES agenda includes achieving social and climate justice by lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60, returning the wealth tax, and hiking the minimum wage by 15%.