Crippling Strikes and a Murder in Paris Spell Trouble for Macron

President Macron’s approval ratings are in freefall in the wake of the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris and growing rancor in France over everything from gas shortages to rising inflation.Crippling nationwide strikes last week coupled with a looming parliamentary showdown over the national budget are already unhinging Mr. Macron’s second five-year-term, to which he was recently elected. The murder of “Lola,” allegedly by a 24-year-old illegal immigrant, has shocked the country and thrown into sharp relief the inability of Monsieur Macron to tackle rising crime.A poll conducted by RTL radio and published on Friday showed that as of October 20 Mr. Macron’s popularity rating has plummeted to 36 percent, even lower than President Biden’s 40 percent approval rating.The French president’s popularity appears to be dropping at a rapid clip; the RTL poll registered a drop of seven points between September and October. His prime minster, Elisabeth Borne, fared even worse, slipping 10 points in approval ratings over the same period. Only 14 percent of French people now believe that Mr. Macron is “listening to the French.”In an attempt to offset his reputation of being aloof, the 44-year-old Macron received Lola’s parents at the Élysée palace on Tuesday — the same day of industry-wide strikes over fuel shortages and energy prices that have sent his popularity into what TF1 television called a “freefall.”His left-wing rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that the “Macronie” is tantamount to chaos, but it is Mr. Macron’s opponents on the right who have seized on the French public’s exasperation with a surge in violent crime that more often than not appears to come bundled with unchecked illegal immigration. The main suspect in Lola’s murder is an Algerian woman who overstayed a student visa and has been living in France illegally for the past three years. She had been ordered to leave the country in August, but France’s creaky deportation process meant that did not happen — a fact not lost on far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen.In parliament on Tuesday Ms. Le Pen addressed the prime minister: “The suspect of this barbaric act should not have been in France. What are you waiting for to be able to act so that this uncontrolled illegal immigration is finally stopped?”In that same parliamentary session, a center-right French lawmaker, Eric Pauget, singled out Mr. Macron: “Lola lost her life because you did not proceed with the expulsion of this national,” he said.The following day, Le Figaro reported that in 2021 just six percent of illegal immigrants in France were deported, down from 13 percent in 2017. The New York Times reported that according to French interior ministry figures featured in a recent parliamentary report, French authorities were only able to deport 22 Algerians out of the 7,731 who were identified as being in France illegally in the first half of 2022.Decrying the lawlessness afflicting parts of the Paris region, the former Paris police chief, Didier Lallement, has claimed in a new book that “one out of every two crimes are committed by a foreigner, often in an irregular situation.”The slow trickle of details about Lola’s murder is inflaming anti-Macron sentiment even further. The body of the Parisian girl, whom French authorities only identify by her first name, was found on October 14 inside a plastic trunk. According to an autopsy, the cause of death was “cardio-respiratory failure with manifestation of asphyxia,” and, as Le Monde reported, the girl had been “slaughtered and stabbed, the body streaked with inscriptions.”The Paris state prosecutor said that a 24-year-old woman, Dahbia B., was being held on charges of murder and rape of a minor, torture, acts of barbarity, and concealment of a corpse. Government spokesman Olivier Véran told reporters that the case left France “profoundly shaken, faced with the horror” of the crime. “We want answers, we want to punish, with the firmness required by the atrocities that were committed,” he added.Violent crime and sexual assaults are reportedly up by almost a third in the Paris area this year compared to last year, but other French cities are also affected. At Nantes, on the Atlantic coast, official figures released this month indicated that 41 percent of people arrested so far this year are foreign nationals. Mr. Lallement wrote that without a check on illegal immigration France faces an “intense and destructive” period of confrontation. The far-right French politician and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour said in a tweet that Lola’s death was a “Francocide,” the targeted death of a French citizen, and was reportedly organizing a rally to protest government inaction. In September, Mr. Macron suggested that illegal immigrants could be sent to the French countryside as a way to revitalize old villages and towns. That prompted Ms. Le Pen to fire back at the time that the only place they should be sent is “back home.”In January, a new immigration bill is expected to be tabled, but how it might fix the crisis is not clear. Like France’s next budget, its passage could be problematic given that Mr. Macron lost a majority in the National Assembly after legislative elections last June.

Crippling Strikes and a Murder in Paris Spell Trouble for Macron

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