Emmanuel Macron has faced a barrage of criticism across the political spectrum after a marathon press conference aimed at reinvigorating his turbulent second term in office.
The French president was accused of poaching from the hard-right playbook only a week after appointing Gabriel Attal, 34, the country’s youngest prime minister, and naming a government that shifted into conservative territory.
Attal’s premiership has had a stormy start, with those on the centre-left of Macron’s party annoyed that eight of the 14 new ministers hail from the centre-right opposition Les Républicains party, including the culture minister, Rachida Dati.
On Wednesday morning, Dati, who is also mayor of the 7th arrondissement – Paris’s most expensive district – announced she would be running to become mayor of Paris in 2026.
A row over the appointment as education minister of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who sent her three children to a private Catholic school in Paris, has also provoked a crisis that has dominated the headlines.
At Tuesday evening’s press conference at the Elysée Palace that ran for two hours and was broadcast live across six channels, Macron spoke of “France remaining France”, a slogan lifted from the hard--
right 2022 presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour.
The president called for “civic values” in schools, with an emphasis on citizenship lessons and trials of uniforms for pupils who should also learn the Marseillaise, the national anthem. If the school uniform experiment introduced in 100 schools was successful and popular it would be extended nationwide from 2026, he said. Macron also indicated he was considering moves to restrict children’s use of television, phones and computers. “There will perhaps be bans, restrictions and perhaps restrictions on content,” he said.
As well as education, the president, whose Renaissance party is threatened with a trouncing in the European elections in June, focused on law and order, helping business by reducing red tape and cutting taxes for middle-income families.
The Elysée had briefed journalists that at the press conference Macron would outline his goals for the next three years of his second mandate that has been punctuated by protests over fiercely contested pension and immigration legislation and the loss of his government’s parliamentary majority. However, critics described Macron’s promised reset as “outdated”, “reactionary” and “self-satisfied”.
Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of France’s Green party, EELV, said it was the speech of a “reactionary technocrat” that was “scary … and old fashioned”.
“Macron sidestepped all the issues that interest the French: rising electricity prices, the ecological crisis, housing, job insecurity,” Tondelier said.
Clémentine Autain, of the hard-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), said Macron was “a president in crisis, out of breath but as self-satisfied as ever”.
Anne-Cecile Mailfert, head of the Women’s Foundation, criticised Macron’s plans for “demographic rearmament” to revive France’s sluggish birth rate, saying on X, formerly Twitter: “Leave our uteruses alone.”
The CIDFF, an association that helps women and families, expressed “deep concern.” “The implementation of natalist policies, profoundly contrary to the autonomy of women, constitutes a worrying political and social regression,” it said.
Marine Le Pen, of the far-right Rassemblement National, dismissed the conference as “just another interminable chit chat”.
Éric Ciotti, the leader of Les Républicains from whose party Macron has lured a number of ministers, tweeted: “Emmanuel Macron announced a ‘great meeting with the nation’. It was nothing. Once again, he is promising wonders.”
Ciotti claimed he came up with the “France remaining France” slogan in 2021. He has also warned Dati, the former justice minister under conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, that she will be expelled from the party for accepting the post in Macron’s government.
Polls suggest Renaissance, which has allied with the centrist MoDem party and and the former prime minister Édouard Philippe’s centre-right Horizons party for the European election, is trailing up to 10 percentage points behind Rassemblement National for the vote.
Away from domestic issues, Macron said he would travel to Ukraine in February to finalise a bilateral security guarantee deal and Paris would deliver more sophisticated weaponry in the coming weeks. He warned that Russia could not be allowed to defeat Ukraine as it would put the security of Europe at risk.
