Emmanuel Macron

"Q: President Macron, friend or foe? A: The jury’s out (applause). But if I become prime minister, I would judge him on deeds, not words."

"In 2015 Merkel in Germany made a radical gesture. After the failure of an EU plan to absorb refugees from the Syrian civil war flowing into Greece, she decided to offer them sanctuary in Germany. Over a million accepted. The reaction was fierce. An unashamedly right-wing group, Alternative for Germany, emerged in the 2018 German elections as the third largest party, strongest in the former East German provinces. Merkel, so long the queen of Europe, was almost toppled. A charismatic French president, Emmanuel Macron, elected in 2017, swiftly moved into lead position in the EU and promptly initiated yet another attempt to concentrate and reform the eurozone. Germany disagreed. Europe looked ever more divided and confused."

"These children are ready to deliver their moral verdict on the people and institutions who knew all about the dangerous, depleted world they would inherit and yet chose not to act. They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight. Their verdict is just as damning, if not more so, for the leaders who deliver passionate and moving speeches about the imperative to respect the Paris Climate Agreement and "make the planet great again" (France's Emanuel Macron, Canada's Justin Trudeau, and so many others), but who then shower subsidies, handouts, and licenses on the fossil fuel and agribusiness giants driving ecological breakdown."

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. [...] What has since become abundantly apparent is the destructive influence of behavioral economics and the so-called "nudge theory" of political decision-making, which relies on and stimuli to steer individual behavior, rather than coercion or restraint. [...] It is also worth recalling that French officials adopted this very same approach until March 14. Macron initially refused to adopt strict containment measures because, as he stated on March 6, "restrictive measures are not sustainable over time." As he exited the theater he had attended that very same day with his wife, he declared "Life goes on. There is no reason, save for vulnerable populations, to change our social behaviors." Lurking beneath these words, which seem utterly irresponsible today, one cannot help but detect a tactic in which this libertarian paternalism allowed governments to defer the measures they knew would necessarily disrupt their economies. Nonetheless, the eventual failure of libertarian paternalism to contain the virus compelled the political authorities to radically change course. In France, our first glimpse of this shift was Macron's Presidential Speech on March 12, in which he appealed to national unity, to our sacred union, and to the French people's "strength of character." Macron’s next speech on March 16 was even more explicit in its martial posture and rhetoric: it is time for general mobilization, for "patriotic self-restraint," because "we are now at war." The figure of the sovereign state now manifests itself in its most extreme but also its most classic form: that of the sword that strikes the enemy, "who is there, invisible, elusive and advancing.""

"But there was an even more surprising twist in the president’s March 12 address: Emmanuel Macron was suddenly and almost miraculously transformed into a staunch defender of the welfare state, and of . He even affirmed the impossibility of reducing everything to the logic of the market! Many commentators and politicians, several of whom are on the left, eagerly welcomed Macron's recognition of the irreplaceable importance of our . Yet what we witnessed here was really little more than a delayed response to Macron's public confrontation with a doctor during his visit to the on February 27. The doctor, a professor of neurology, insisted Macron provide the public hospitals with an "investment shock" ("choc d’attractivité"), and Macron assented to the doctor's demands, at least in principle. It was of course immediately recognized that Macron's subsequent pronouncements were completely hollow, and they in no way called into the question the neoliberal policies his government has methodically pursued for years."

"Macron is responsible for Haftar's mass graves. Macron is now trying to play the colonial game in the Eastern Mediterranean using Greece."

"Macron's wife? His grandmother."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"Brexit has been pushed by certain people who predicted easy solutions. Brexit has shown us one thing - and I fully respect British sovereignty in saying this - it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars. This is all the more true because they left the next day, so they didn't have to manage it."

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism."

"Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."

"We will never abandon Ireland or the Irish people no matter what happens, because this solidarity is the very purpose of the European project."

"Il faut pouvoir tenir. Si on prend des mesures qui sont très contraignantes, ce n'est pas tenable dans la durée."

"La vie continue. Il n'y a aucune raison, mis à part pour les populations fragilisées, de modifier nos habitudes de sortie."

"Déléguer notre alimentation, notre protection, notre capacité à soigner notre cadre de vie au fond à d'autres est une folie. Nous devons en reprendre le contrôle, construire plus encore que nous ne le faisons déjà une France, une Europe souveraine, une France et une Europe qui tiennent fermement leur destin en main."

"So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values — journalists who write in a country that is the heir to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — when I see them legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost."

"There is a sort of misunderstanding about what the European model is, and the French model in particular, American society used to be segregationist before it moved to a multiculturalist model, which is essentially about coexistence of different ethnicities and religions next to one another… Our model is universalist, not multiculturalist. In our society, I don't care whether someone is black, yellow or white, whether they are Catholic or Muslim, a person is first and foremost a citizen."

"In the political debate we often ask ourselves the question of our identity. But our identity is never built on narrow-mindedness, or on first names or crampedness."

"Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin."

"I'm not the candidate of one faction anymore, but the president for all of us. … I know full well that many in this country voted for me not because they support my ideas but to block the far-right. I want to thank them tonight, and know I owe them a debt in the years to come. … We have so much to do, and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times, times where France must be heard, France must clearly make its choices, and France must anchor its strength in all fields, and we will do just that. … We also need to be careful and respectful because our country is full of division and doubt. Therefore we must be strong and no one will be left by the wayside. Together we must work towards that unity which is the only way through which we can live happier in France, and can overcome the challenges of the coming years. The coming years won't be easy for sure, but they will be historic, and together, we will write that story for the coming generations."

"My thoughts go out to the families of the victims of the terrible accident that took place last night near Larissa. France stands alongside the Greeks."

"If it wasn't for France, you’d be 10,000 times deeper in shit."

"No major US ally has been spared from the president's indignities. In private, he pillories partner nations and their leaders and is not shy about doing the same in the open, as in the case of his comment about the Canadian prime minister being "very dishonest & weak," only hours after being hosted by the northern neighbor. He's done the same with France, mocking President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter for his low approval ratings and high unemployment, and with Germany, criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration for failing to reduce crime and accusing its leaders of being freeloaders that take advantage of US generosity."

"Nous sommes entrés dans un monde de grandes migrations. Et on en aura de plus en plus. Parce que la planète est en profond déséquilibre, nous auront dans les décennies qui viennent des migrations dues à des conflits géopolitiques qui vont continuer à se jouer et nous aurons des migrations climatiques... La France ne pourra pas l'endiguer... des phénomènes migratoires beaucoup plus forts que ce qu'on a vécu avec la Syrie."

"Ce soir, on sait qu'au moins un policier a été tué, qu’un autre a été blessé. Cet impondérable, cette menace fera partie du quotidien des prochaines années. Je témoigne toute ma solidarité à l’égard de nos forces de police, de nos forces de l’ordre. J'ai une pensée pour la famille de la victime."

"Make our planet great again."

"The fight against climate change is by far the most significant struggle of our times."

"Climate change adds further injustice to an already unfair world."

"I believe in a form of transcendence, that's why I thoroughly respect the role of religions in society."

"She broke down barriers … She became part of the hearts and minds of French people ... Josephine Baker, you enter the Pantheon because while you were born American, deep down there was no one more French than you."