Emmanuel Macron is the president of France, first elected in 2017 as a 39-year-old electoral debutant, and in office until 2027. A former financier. He abolished the cap on medical student numbers in 2019. Since his first election he has pushed the idea of European "strategic autonomy"—for years brushed aside by France's Atlanticist neighbours as fanciful Gaullist grandeur, but vindicated by Donald Trump's return to the White House. In June 2025 Macron and Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's prime minister, boarded a Danish warship off the coast of Greenland, declaring "Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken."
As his second term nears its end (he cannot stand for a third consecutive term), Macron has been filling key institutional posts. He named General Fabien Mandon as armed-forces chief, Amélie de Montchalin as head of the state auditor, and Richard Ferrand, a political ally, as head of the Constitutional Council (the president names three of its nine members, each for a nine-year term). François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Bank of France, said he would step down ahead of schedule in June 2026, letting Macron appoint a successor to serve a six-year term. Jordan Bardella protested that Macron was "trying to lock down our institutions in order to keep control." His net approval rating has sunk to -49% per YouGov, with fewer than one in five voters expressing confidence in him.
Mr Macron has a ritual of visiting the Salon de l'Agriculture in Paris for 12-13 hours at a stretch. The 2026 edition will feature no cows, owing to bovine disease.
On July 24th 2025 Mr Macron announced that France would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. As of mid-2025, 147 of the 193 members of the UN already recognised a Palestinian state. Britain and Canada followed suit within days.
Mr Macron launched his broad centrist political movement in 2016. Since 2022 he has appointed five prime ministers. On September 9th 2025 he named Sébastien Lecornu, his defence minister, as prime minister after parliament toppled François Bayrou on September 8th over a deficit-cutting budget—the second government to fall in nine months. Marine Le Pen said the appointment was "the last bullet of Macronism" and called for fresh elections. Mr Lecornu resigned less than four weeks later, on October 5th, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister under the Fifth Republic. Mr Lecornu ultimately stayed on as prime minister, forming a new minority government reliant on Socialist votes. Mr Macron's 2023 pension reform—which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64—was suspended as the price of compromise.
Two of Mr Macron's former prime ministers lashed out during the crisis. Gabriel Attal, whom he named prime minister in 2024 at the age of 34 and who now heads Mr Macron's party, declared: "I no longer understand the president's decisions." Edouard Philippe went further, suggesting that Mr Macron should get a budget through parliament and then resign. Mr Macron has repeatedly said he will serve his full term.
Mr Macron paid a state visit to Britain starting on July 8th 2025, spending three days in London. He gave a speech in English to a joint sitting of Parliament at Westminster, urging the two countries to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" for democracy and sovereignty. Lord Ricketts, a former British ambassador to Paris, said the relationship "is certainly the best it's been since Brexit."
During the visit, Britain and France for the first time agreed to "co-ordinate" the use of their nuclear weapons, stating "there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations." The two countries are Europe's only nuclear-armed powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council.
In September 2025 Mr Macron's popularity fell to 22%, a record low. At the United Nations in New York on September 22nd-23rd 2025, he declared France's recognition of a Palestinian state and gave a speech defending multilateralism: "We have no right to cynicism. We have no right to fatigue. We have no right to the spirit of defeat."
Mr Macron and Keir Starmer jointly chaired a meeting at Northwood military headquarters on July 10th 2025, leading an effort for a "reassurance" force for Ukraine. The Lancaster House defence treaties, signed in 2010, state that a threat to the "vital interests" of one country is a threat to the other.
The Franco-British relationship had been strained by the AUKUS submarine deal in 2021, which cancelled a Franco-Australian contract. When Liz Truss was fleetingly prime minister, she refused to say whether Mr Macron was a "friend or foe."
By late 2025 Mr Macron, Friedrich Merz and Sir Keir had formed a tight trilateral leadership known as the E3—the closest thing to European "strategic autonomy" that Mr Macron had long championed. The "coalition of the willing" planning a reassurance force for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire is co-led by Britain and France, with a military headquarters outside Paris. Benjamin Haddad, France's Europe minister, said the three leaders "share the view that, even if you have ties to the US, the Russian threat and geopolitical context mean that Europe has to take charge of its own security." On January 6th 2026 Mr Macron hosted European, Ukrainian and other leaders for a meeting of the coalition at which France, Britain and others agreed to deploy an as-yet-unspecified multinational force in the event of a ceasefire.
In February 2026, in an interview with The Economist, Macron termed the moment a "Greenland moment": fellow Europeans have begun to understand the gravity of the stakes. He warned that Europe is dealing with an "openly hostile" American administration that wants its "dismemberment". He recommitted to the troubled FCAS fighter-jet programme—widely described as near collapse—and wanted to attract additional European partners.
He sent his diplomatic adviser to Moscow, who returned with the message that Russia was not interested in peace.
On March 2nd 2026 Mr Macron flew to the high-security naval base at Île Longue, Brittany, and spoke in front of one of France's four serving nuclear ballistic missile submarines. In a marked shift in France's nuclear doctrine, he said France would increase its nuclear stockpile. France currently maintains 290 warheads, slightly more than Britain. Henceforth, to keep adversaries in the dark, France will not disclose how many warheads it possesses.
Mr Macron also unveiled a new doctrine he called "forward deterrence": a partnership with Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden, modelled on the Franco-British nuclear co-ordination forged in 2025. Describing Germany as the "key" partner, Mr Macron said closer co-operation would involve joint exercises with France's nuclear-armed air force, at which others would contribute conventional forces. From time to time it could mean deploying nuclear-armed fighter jets to other European countries, though there is no talk of permanently stationing nuclear weapons abroad. Norway is considering joining. France and Germany launched a joint steering group on nuclear deterrence. Bruno Tertrais, a specialist on France's nuclear forces, called the speech "the most significant update to French nuclear deterrence policy in 30 years." France would keep full control of the decision to launch a nuclear attack. The partnership comes with no strings attached: no financial contribution has been requested. Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland, posted on X: "We are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us."
From May 10th-12th 2026 Macron hosted France's first Africa summit in an English-speaking country, in Nairobi. He cooked with a Kenyan influencer, ran with marathoner Eliud Kipchoge and danced to "Jerusalema". Some $1bn in bilateral deals were signed with Kenya, including an $820m joint venture to revamp a port terminal in Mombasa. Total pledges (public and private) came to about €14bn from France plus €9bn from African partners. A new Ipsos poll found 93% of Kenyans and 90% of Nigerians have a good image of France—more than in many French-speaking countries. The summit followed France's forced retreat from the Sahel, where coup-installed regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have turned to Russia; none were invited to the summit. Macron has previously returned cultural artefacts from museums to Senegal and Benin, reset relations with Rwanda and reformed the CFA franc shared by west African countries.
Mr Macron is constitutionally barred from standing again after his second term ends in 2027. He has privately called the suspension of his landmark pension reform "painful." For the remaining 15 months of his presidency he stands little chance of passing economic reforms; his former labour minister, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, says the best the government can manage is a budget that does not worsen the public finances. His remaining domestic hopes rest on a bill to ban social-media use for under-15s—for which he has held town-hall discussions around France—and a "die in dignity" bill to legalise assisted dying, which he cited in his 2026 new year's message.
Shannon's Observation: Nothing is so frustrating as a bad situation that is beginning to improve.