Engulfed in Scandal at Home, France’s Macron Alienates Continental Partners With His Solicitousness Toward Putin

Engulfed in an unfolding domestic political scandal, President Macron is also lurching toward the year’s end by alienating many erstwhile partners on the Continent with his recent remarks about Russia. While neither circumstance is enough to dislodge the middle-aged maverick from his presidential perch, taken together they are dimming his shine at Paris and undercutting his waning influence on the global stage. Mr. Macron’s credibility as a French leader of stature is increasingly compromised by a pair of high-level investigations into the funding of his 2017 and 2022 election campaigns. The probes also implicate an American consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, into which France’s financial public prosecutor opened a probe for alleged tax fraud in March.In October the financial public prosecutor set its sights more squarely on Mr. Macron himself over, among other things, “favoritism and concealment of favoritism” with respect to the awarding of lucrative government contracts. That investigation is moving forward at a clip.French magistrates are exploring the frequency of contacts between Mr. Macron and consultants at McKinsey while the former was a candidate for the presidency. While Mr. Macon has been relatively tight-lipped about the inquiries, a slow drip of details to the French press has served to accelerate rancor in the powerful national assembly, where Mr. Macron lost his parliamentary majority in April.A French investigative newspaper, Mediapart, has reported that McKinsey’s relationship with Mr. Macron even predates his first presidential candidacy. One French legislator has now called for his resignation. “Macron and his political party have conflicts of interest everywhere,” Charles-Henri Gallois of the Generation Frexit party told the the Daily Express in Britain, “but the most symbolic one remains McKinsey … we do know that the McKinsey boys were campaigning for Macron in 2017 and then his government has paid for almost fake consulting missions. The total bill for the consulting cabinet, among which was McKinsey, is close to a billion euros.” Mr. Gallois added that “Emmanuel Macron, if only he had a bit of decency, should resign over this affair.”Whether other parliamentarians will join the call for Mr. Macron’s resignation is unclear. The Sun reached out to another outspoken Eurosceptic politician, Florian Philippot of the Patriots party, a former vice president of the National Rally (formerly the National Front), for reaction to the Macron investigations but a media representative had not responded as we went to press.Even if Monsieur Macron is found to be in violation of France’s stringent public procurement regulations, he is shielded by presidential immunity until his term ends. Yet his ambitious domestic agenda for things like much overdue pension reform might meet a dead end.The international political headwinds are also coming in gusts, mainly from the direction of Ukraine. In an interview with the French television station TF1, the French president doubled down on his outlier position of how to bring the war to a swift conclusion. To wit, he renewed his controversial call to take Russian as well as Ukrainian security considerations into account. “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table,” Mr. Macron stated. He added that “this means that one of the essential points we must address — as President Putin has always said — is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”Those remarks were perceived by some as being overly sympathetic to Moscow. Following them, a top adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in tweet, “Civilized world needs ‘security guarantees’ from barbaric intentions of post-Putin Russia…. It will be possible only after tribunal, conviction of war authors and war criminals, imposition of large-scale reparations and bloody clarification of … ‘who is the one to blame.’” A former Lithuanian defense minister, Linas Linkevicius, tweeted, “Russia has all security guarantees if it doesn’t attack, annex or occupy its neighbors.” Mr. Macron engaged in strenuous diplomacy with Moscow ahead of the Russian invasion in February but the French demarche fell short.Yet it may be worth recalling that France has had a long and varied relationship with the Western military alliance. In 1966 President de Gaulle pulled the country out of NATO’s integrated military command and said France would no longer host NATO bases on its territory. It remained a loyal NATO ally, but did not rejoin the command structure until 2009. While Mr. Zelensky has rejected talks with Vladimir Putin, Mr. Macron has on previous occasions attempted to keep a chair for the Russian at the European table, buttressed perhaps by some voices at Paris that are in alignment with his own.The founder of the center-right France Arise party, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, told the radio station Europe 1 on Sunday that “the moment has come to achieve peace, to achieve a compromise between the two sides, to calm down Zelensky. It is necessary to completely lift economic sanctions, stop the supply of weapons in exchange for a ceasefire and start negotiations.”In any event Mr. Putin seems content, at least for now, to leave his seat empty. It is a fact that even after nearly 10 months of Russian aggression the French president seems intent on tuning out.

Engulfed in Scandal at Home, France’s Macron Alienates Continental Partners With His Solicitousness Toward Putin

More from the New York Sun

‘Ulster American’ Is a Bawdy Send Up of Progressive Pieties — and an Irreverent Inquiry Into Irishness

Republican Congressman Calls for Tucker Carlson To Be Prosecuted for ‘Treason’ for Pre-War Contact With Iranians

More from the New York Sun

‘Ulster American’ Is a Bawdy Send Up of Progressive Pieties — and an Irreverent Inquiry Into Irishness

Republican Congressman Calls for Tucker Carlson To Be Prosecuted for ‘Treason’ for Pre-War Contact With Iranians

American Socialists To Join New Cuba Aid Flotilla Despite Hints of Negotiations Aimed at Ousting Communist Leadership

Trump’s Pared-Back Tariffs Return to Trade Court Under New Legal Rationale

North Korean Leader’s Daughter, 13, Shows Up at Missile-Firing Exercise Looking All the More Like His Heir Apparent

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Unfaithful Hollywood Adaptation

Will Hollywood Bite Its Tongue at the Oscars?

Reuters Claims To Have Unmasked Banksy After Extensive Investigation