Macron’s Summer of Discontent is Here

It was guaranteed to happen: Emmanuel Macron’s post-election honeymoon is officially over. :

French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity rating has slumped by 10 percentage points this month, according to an Ifop poll on Sunday – the biggest decline for a new president since 1995.

The poll, published in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, said 54 percent of people in France were satisfied with Macron in July, compared with 64 percent in June.

It added the last time a newly elected president had lost ground in that way was Jacques Chirac in 1995. The Ifop poll echoed a similar finding in a recent BVA poll.

By all accounts, Macron was expecting as much, and is still prepared to ram through all the reforms he promised to pass—especially the ones affecting the labor market—by Presidential decree, a procedure which almost completely circumvents lengthy parliamentary debates. Parliament will still need to first grant Macron a green light to pass the decrees, and then ratify them within a certain set timeframe after their announcement.

Macron’s parliamentary majority is made up in large part of first-time parliamentarians with no loyalty but to him and his “movement”, and he is expected to pull it off. But in these febrile times, it’s foolish to bank on anything as a sure thing: maybe the neophytes get cold feet if discontent with Macron spills out onto the streets?

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