PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he would run for a second term in April’s elections, seeking a mandate to steer the euro zone’s second-largest economy through the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macron announced his bid in a letter published by several regional newspapers.
If he succeeds, he would be the first French leader for two decades to win a second term in office.
“We have not achieved everything we set out to do. There are choices that, with the experience I have gained from you, I would probably make differently,” Macron said in the letter, listing the different crises he had to face over the past five years, including militant attacks, COVID, riots and war.
He defended his record, pointing to unemployment at a 15-year low. “I am running to defend our values that the world’s disorders are threatening,” he added.
Without giving a detailed manifesto, Macron said he would continue to cut taxes and push for the French to work more, suggesting a return of an abandoned pension reform. He also hinted at a reform of the education system, saying teachers should be freer and paid better.
Macron enters the presidential race just a month or so before the election’s first round on April 10. Opinion polls project that he is favorite to win a contest that sees multiple challengers on the right and left fragmenting the vote.
The Ukraine war has already upended the campaign, complicating Macron’s entry into the race and leaving two far-right contenders who had so far performed strongly in polls to justify their hitherto pro-Russia, pro-Putin stance.
With Macron at the forefront of European efforts to secure a cease-fire and a peaceful resolution to the conflict, a campaign with fewer rallies by the incumbent and an unusual focus on foreign policy lies ahead.
Macron, who has spoken on the phone with Putin 11 times this year, has said he would continue as the war rages on and acknowledged in the letter he will not be able to campaign as he would have liked because of the war.
That may not hurt his chances. Voter surveys have shown a bounce in support for Macron as far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour revise their views on relations with Moscow and amid an outpouring of sympathy for Ukrainian refugees.
But in a sign identity politics could rear its head again in the final stretch of the campaign, Zemmour, a former TV commentator known for his inflammatory anti-immigrant views, said in a reply to Macron’s letter that the leader was hostile to the values of Zemmour and his supporters.
“Emmanuel Macron spent the past five years fighting the France of our childhood. He hates our identity. We cherish it and want to transmit it to our children,” Zemmour said.
Center-right conservative Valerie Pecresse, who is in third place in the polls but would be his toughest opponent in a runoff, said Macron was running to do the reforms he had failed to do over the past five years. “You need courage to reform. I have it,” she said.
Macron became France’s youngest leader since Napoleon five years ago, pitching himself as a political outsider who would break the old left-right dichotomy, make France more investor-friendly and make the EU stronger.
He cut taxes for big business and the wealthy, loosened labor laws and marketed France Inc. as a start-up nation, but anti-government “yellow vest” protests and then the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to slow his reform plans.
Macron launches re-election bid to protect French from ‘world’s disorders’
https://arab.news/7nbak
Macron launches re-election bid to protect French from ‘world’s disorders’
- Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest leader since Napoleon five years ago, pitching himself as a political outsider who would break the old left-right dichotomy
- Macron marketed France Inc. as a start-up nation, but anti-government ‘yellow vest’ protests and the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to slow his reform plans
Starmer arrives in China to defend ‘pragmatic’ partnership
- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hoping to restore long fraught relations
BEIJING: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hoping to restore long fraught relations.
It is the first visit to China by a UK prime minister since 2018 and follows a string of Western leaders courting Beijing in recent weeks, pivoting from a mercurial United States.
Starmer, who is also expected to visit Shanghai on Friday, will later make a brief stop in Japan to meet with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
For Xi, the trip is an opportunity to show Beijing can be a reliable partner at a time when President Donald Trump’s policies have rattled historic ties between Washington and its Western allies.
Starmer is battling record low popularity polls and hopes the visit can boost Britain’s beleaguered economy.
The trip has been lauded by Downing Street as a chance to boost trade and investment ties while raising thorny issues such as national security and human rights.
Starmer will meet with Xi for lunch on Thursday, followed by a meeting with Premier Li Qiang.
The British leader said on Wednesday this visit to China was “going to be a really important trip for us,” vowing to make “some real progress.”
There are “opportunities” to deepen bilateral relations, Starmer told reporters traveling with him on the plane to China.
“It doesn’t make sense to stick our head in the ground and bury in the sand when it comes to China, it’s in our interests to engage and not compromise on national security,” he added.
China, for its part, “is willing to take this visit as an opportunity to enhance political mutual trust,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun reiterated Wednesday during a news briefing.
Starmer is the latest Western leader to be hosted by Beijing in recent months, following visits by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Faced with Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canada for signing a trade agreement with China, and the US president’s attempts to create a new international institution with his “Board of Peace,” Beijing has been affirming its support for the United Nations to visiting leaders.
Reset ties
UK-China relations plummeted in 2020 after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, which severely curtailed freedoms in the former British colony.
They soured further since with both powers exchanging accusations of spying.
Starmer, however, was quick to deny fresh claims of Chinese spying after the Telegraph newspaper reported Monday that China had hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years.
“There’s no evidence of that. We’ve got robust schemes, security measures in place as you’d expect,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Since taking the helm in 2024, Starmer has been at pains to reset ties with the world’s second-largest economy and Britain’s third-biggest trade partner.
In China, he will be accompanied by around 60 business leaders from the finance, pharmaceutical, automobile and other sectors, and cultural representatives as he tries to balance attracting vital investment and appearing firm on national security concerns.
The Labour leader also spoke to Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Brazil in November 2024.
Jimmy Lai
The prime minister is also expected to raise the case of Hong Kong media mogul and democracy supporter Jimmy Lai, 78, a British national facing years in prison after being found guilty of collusion charges in December.
When asked by reporters about his plans to discuss Lai’s case, Starmer avoided specifics, but said engaging with Beijing was to ensure that “issues where we disagree can be discussed.”
“You know my practice, which is to raise issues that need to be raised,” added Starmer, who has been accused by the Conservative opposition of being too soft in his approach to Beijing.
Reporters Without Borders urged Starmer in a letter to secure Lai’s release during his visit.
The British government has also faced fierce domestic opposition after it approved this month contentious plans for a new Chinese mega-embassy in London, which critics say could be used to spy on and harass dissidents.
At the end of last year, Starmer acknowledged that China posed a “national security threat” to the UK, drawing flak from Chinese officials.
The countries also disagree on key issues including China’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the war in Ukraine, and accusations of human rights abuses in China.
