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One could almost hear the sighs of relief, from Paris to Brussels, and all the way to Washington, as French leader Emmanuel Macron clinched another five-year term in the Elysée Palace. Though polls narrowed during some points leading up to Sunday’s runoff, Macron eventually beat out far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections—a contest that risked shattering the Western alliance against Russia, and jeopardizing the very survival of the European Union.
Macron’s victory over Le Pen, with 58.2% of the vote to her 41.8%, according to estimated results released at 8 p.m. local time after polls closed, was significantly smaller than the two politicians’ last face-off in 2017. Back then, 39-year-old Macron shot to power as an outsider, with a 32-point lead over Le Pen, by promising to modernize what he called a sclerotic, over-regulated country.
In the past five years, he streamlined French labor laws, making it easier for companies to hire and fire people, and scrapped the wealth tax. But he was forced to drop an increase in fuel tax, when the plan sparked the so-called “yellow vest” movement, with explosive protests that rocked the country for months in 2018 and 2019. Then came COVID-19 in 2020, with nationwide lockdowns, in a pandemic that has so far killed 142,000 people in France. And as that receded, the Ukraine war broke out, thrusting Macron into the role as the E.U.’s major conduit to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Read More: Emmanuel Macron Is on Track to Win Re-Election. What Comes After Could Be Tougher
For all that, Macron, 44, pulled off an impressive feat: He is the first French leader in 20 years to win reelection—since 2002, when then-president Jacques Chirac won against Le Pen’s rabidly anti-immigrant father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who faced a wall…
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Source : time
