Macron’s sinister attempt to ‘Le Pen-proof’ France

With president Emmanuel Macron at the helm, the French political establishment is busy ‘Le Pen-proofing’ state institutions. This is an attempt to ensure that should the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella become president, she or he would be unable to exercise much power.

Macron and his cronies are understandably concerned about the threat posed to their rule by the right-wing populists of the National Rally. According to the opinion polls, a National Rally candidate stands a good chance of winning France’s 2027 presidential election. As it stands, that would be party president Jordan Bardella, given Marine Le Pen is currently banned from running for president, after being found guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds – although she is appealing the conviction.

In response, Macron and his team are currently attempting to neutralise the impact of a potential National Rally presidency. They are encouraging those currently holding key posts in the French state to step down, and appointing their own people in their stead. As The Times notes, Macron allies are being appointed to head up every state institution, from the armed forces to the central bank, the Bank of France. Holders of these roles are usually protected from dismissal for five to seven years.

So far, Macron has already replaced the head of the French armed forces with Fabien Mandon, his former personal military adviser. In an additional attempt to limit the influence of a National Rally president over French policy, Macron has also initiated a major reshuffle of 60 ambassadorial posts.

Elsewhere, Pierre Moscovici has stepped down from the court of auditors, the supposedly independent body that oversees government spending. In his place is Macron ally and budget minister Amélie de Montchalin. The governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, has resigned 18 months before the end of his term, with Macron now in the process of choosing his successor. And last year, Macron appointed his close friend, Richard Ferrand, to the head of the Constitutional Council. This is all being undertaken to render those who oversee government finances and legal matters impervious to potential National Rally influence.

In this way, Macron hopes to deprive his potential populist successor of any real presidential authority. As Le Pen herself put it, ‘what we are witnessing is an administrative coup d’état where a president… tries to prevent the next government from acting by installing his friends in every corner of the state’. The goal of these appointments, explained Le Pen, is to prevent a populist president ‘from governing the country as the French people wish, by creating a state within the state that is loyal only to the Élysée’.

The media may be dubbing it ‘Le Pen-proofing’. But it is better understood as ‘democracy proofing’. It is an attempt to insulate the key institutions of the state from any form of democratic accountability and control.

This project of democracy proofing is hardly without precedent. In many Western nations, governments attempt to bypass representative democracy by outsourcing decision-making to state institutions and other non-elected bodies, from the judiciary to international organisations. Through these expert-stuffed, ‘independent’ entities, controversial issues are depoliticised and converted into technical or managerial questions. Those involved present their ‘independence’ from representative politics as a virtue, a source of moral authority.

Yet what this really means is that these bodies are independent of the electorate. They are free from accountability.

Macron is going a step further. Through his Le Pen-proofing programme, he is attempting to ensure that those in charge of state institutions are insulated not just from the electorate, but also from the elected government. This is nothing short of a democratic outrage.

Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.