These days, every opportunity is worth taking. On Tuesday, March 11, Emmanuel Macron chose the inauguration of the future headquarters of France’s domestic intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Internal Security, in the northern Paris suburbs, to share some political commentary. “I have heard, in the debates over the last few days, people who, in a way, challenged the geopolitical threat. The president of the Republic is allegedly inventing the Russian threat,” said Macron, feigning surprise. “These people obviously haven’t followed the news,” he railed.
Macron’s targets included his rival in the 2022 presidential election, Marine Le Pen. The far-right leader, for whom “Islamist fundamentalism remains the primary threat,” not Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has become entangled in trying to justify her ideological links with US President Donald Trump and her long-documented close ties to the Kremlin.
Macron was once again attacking his favorite adversary, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party, because he has regained some confidence on the national stage, after long months where he was more withdrawn. The US’s foreign policy about-face, initiated by Trump, has changed the game. The French president has seen his leadership strengthened within the European Council, where he is now the longest-serving leader, after the euro-skeptic Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban. His policy of “the Europe of power” or European strategic autonomy, which he laid out in a speech at the Sorbonne university, back in 2017, is now being borne out by events. “Europe is one of the few subjects on which Emmanuel Macron cannot be caught out contradicting himself,” observed political scientist Vincent Martigny.
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