Born in Amiens in 1977, he is the son of Françoise Macron (née Noguès), a physician, and Jean-Michel Macron, professor of neurology at the University of Picardy. The couple divorced in 2010. Macron has two siblings, Laurent, born in 1979 and Estelle, born in 1982. Françoise and Jean-Michel’s first child was stillborn.

Macron did not perform national service because he was pursuing his graduate studies. Born in December 1977, he belonged to the last year when service was mandatory.

In the 2002 French presidential election, Macron voted for souverainist Jean-Pierre Chevènement. In 2007, Macron voted for Ségolène Royal in the second round of the presidential election. During the Socialist Party primary in 2011, Macron voiced his support for François Hollande.

As President of France, Macron also serves ex officio as one of the two Co-Princes of Andorra. His chief of staff Patrick Strzoda serves as his representative in this capacity. Joan Enric Vives i Sicília, appointed as the current Bishop of Urgell on 12 May 2003, serves as Macron’s Co-Prince.

Macron obtained a master’s degree in public affairs at the Sciences Po, majoring in “Public Guidance and Economy” before training for a senior civil service career at the selective École nationale d’administration (ENA), training at an embassy in Nigeria and in an office in Oise before graduating in 2004.

After graduating from ENA in 2004, Macron became an Inspector in the Inspection générale des finances (IGF), a branch of the Finance Ministry. Macron was mentored by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the then-head of the IGF. During his time as an Inspector of Finances, Macron gave lectures during the summer at the “prep’ENA” (a special cram school for the ENA entrance examination) at IPESUP (fr), an elite private school specializing in preparation for the entrance examinations of the Grandes écoles, such as HEC or Sciences Po.

In 2006, Laurence Parisot offered him the job of managing director for Mouvement des Entreprises de France, the largest employer federation in France, but he declined.

Macron met François Hollande through Jean-Pierre Jouyet in 2006 and joined his staff in 2010. In 2007, Macron attempted to run for a seat in the National Assembly in Picardy under the Socialist Party label in the 2007 legislative elections, however his application was declined. Macron was offered the chance to be the deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister François Fillon in 2010 though he declined.

In August 2007, Macron was appointed deputy rapporteur for Jacques Attali’s “Commission to Unleash French Growth”. In 2008, Macron paid €50,000 to buy himself out of his government contract. He then became an investment banker in a highly-paid position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. In March 2010, he was appointed to the Attali Commission as a member.

Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux, 24 years his senior, who was a teacher in his high school, La Providence High School in Amiens. They met during a theatre workshop that she was giving when he was a 15-year-old student and she was a 39-year-old teacher, but they only became a couple once he was 18. His parents initially attempted to separate the couple by sending him away to Paris to finish the final year of his schooling, as they felt his youth made this relationship inappropriate. However, the couple reunited after Macron graduated, and were married in 2007. She has three children from a previous marriage, but Macron has no children of his own. Trogneux’s role in Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign has been considered pivotal, with close Macron allies stating that Trogneux assisted Macron with developing skills such as public speaking.

In September 2008, Macron left his job as an Inspector of Finances and took a position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. Macron was inspired to leave the government due to the election of Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency. He was originally offered the job by François Henrot. His first responsibility at Rothschild & Cie Banque was assisting with the acquisition of Cofidis by Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe.

Macron formed a relationship with Alain Minc, a businessman on the supervisory board of Le Monde. In 2010, Macron was promoted to partner with the bank after working on the recapitalization of Le Monde and the acquisition by Atos of Siemens IT Solutions and Services. In the same year, Macron was appointed as managing director and put in charge of Nestlé’s acquisition of one of Pfizer’s largest subsidiaries based around baby drinks. His share of the fees on this €9 billion deal made Macron a millionaire.

In February 2012, he advised businessman Philippe Tillous-Borde, the CEO of the Avril Group.

Macron reported that he had earned €2 million between December 2010 and May 2012. Official documents show that between 2009 and 2013, Macron had earned almost €3 million. He left Rothschild & Cie in 2012.

On 15 May 2012, Macron became the deputy secretary general of the Élysée, a senior role in President François Hollande’s staff. Macron served with Nicolas Revel. He served under the secretary general, Pierre-René Lemas.

In 2012, Macron was a Young Leader with the French-American Foundation.

The Macron family legacy is traced back to the village of Authie in Hauts-de-France. One of Macron’s paternal great-grandfathers, George William Robertson, was English, and was born in Bristol, United Kingdom. His maternal grandparents, Jean and Germaine Noguès (née Arribet), are from the Pyrenean town of Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Gascony. Macron commonly visited Bagnères-de-Bigorre to visit his grandmother Germaine, whom he called “Manette”. Macron associates his enjoyment of reading and his left-ward political leanings to Germaine, who, after coming from a modest upbringing of a stationmaster father and a housekeeping mother, became a teacher then a principal, and died in 2013.

On 10 June 2014, it was announced that Macron had resigned from his role and was replaced by Laurence Boone. Reasons for his departure were that he was disappointed to not be included in the first Government of Manuel Valls and also frustrated by his lack of influence in the reforms proposed by the government. This was following the appointment of Jean-Pierre Jouyet as chief of staff.

Macron was offered a chance to be a candidate in the municipal elections in 2014 in his hometown of Amiens. He declined the offer. Manuel Valls attempted to appoint Macron as the Budget Minister but François Hollande rejected the idea due to Macron never being elected before.

He was appointed as the Minister of Economy and Industry in the second Valls Cabinet on 26 August 2014, replacing Arnaud Montebourg. He was the youngest Minister of the Economy since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1962. Macron was branded by the media as the “Anti-Montebourg” due to being pro-EU and much more moderate, while Montebourg was eurosceptic and left wing. As Minister of the Economy, Macron was at the forefront of pushing through business-friendly reforms. On 17 February 2015, prime minister Manuel Valls pushed Macron’s signature law package through a reluctant parliament using the special 49.3 procedure.

In August 2015, Macron said that he was no longer a member of the Socialist Party and was an independent.

After the “Law on Growth and Purchasing Power” brought on by Arnaud Montebourg with the aim to “restore 6 billion euros of purchasing power” to the French public. Macron presented the Macron Law to a council of ministers. The law intended to rejuvenate the French economy by fixing regulations based around Sunday work, transport and driving licences, public sector jobs and the transport market. Manuel Valls, under the fear that the law would not find a majority in the National Assembly, decided to push the law through with the 49.3 procedure. The law was adopted on 10 April 2015.

Macron first became known to the French public after his appearance on the French TV programme “Des Paroles Et Des Actes” in March 2015. Before forming his political party En marche, Macron had hosted a series of events with him speaking in public, his first one in March 2015 in Val-de-Marne. Macron threatened to leave Manuel Valls’ second government over the proposed reform on removing dual-nationality from terrorists. He also took various foreign trips, including one to Israel where he spoke on the advancement of digital technology.

Macron has advocated in favour of the free market and reducing the public-finances deficit. He first publicly used the word liberal to describe himself in a 2015 interview with Le Monde. He added that he is “neither right nor left” and that he advocates a “collective solidarity”. During a visit to the Puy du Fou in Vendée with Philippe de Villiers in August 2016, he stated: “Honesty compels me to say that I am not a socialist.” Macron explained that he was part of the “left government” because he wanted to “serve the public interest” as any minister would. In his book Révolution, published in November 2016, Macron presents himself as both a “leftist” and a “liberal … if by liberalism one means trust in man.”

In June 2015, Macron and his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel published a platform advocating a continuation of European integration. They advocate the continuation “of structural reforms (such as labor markets), institutional reforms (including the area of economic governance)”, but also a reconciliation of “tax and social systems (like better co-ordination or harmonization of the corporate taxes via, for example, minimum wages)”.

In July 2015, as economy minister, Macron stated in an interview that any Greece bailout package must also ease their burden by including reductions in the country’s overall debt. In July 2015, while challenging the “loaded question” of the 2015 Greek referendum, Macron called for resisting the “automatic ejection” of Greece from the Eurozone and avoiding “the Versailles Treaty of the Eurozone,” in which case the “No” side would win. He believes that the Greek and European leaders co-produced the Greek government-debt crisis, and that the agreement reached in summer 2015 between Greece and its creditors, notably driven by François Hollande, will not help Greece in dealing with the debt, while at the same time criticizing the International Monetary Fund.

Amid tensions and deterioration of relations with the current government, Macron founded an independent political party, En marche, in Amiens on 6 April 2016. A liberal, progressive political movement that gathered huge media coverage when it was first established, the party and Macron were both reprimanded by President Hollande and the question of Macron’s loyalty to the government was raised. Several MEPs spoke out in support for the movement though the majority of the Socialist Party spoke against En marche including Manuel Valls, Michel Sapin, Axelle Lemaire and Christian Eckert.

In June 2016, support for Macron and his movement, En marche, began to grow in the media with L’Express, Les Echos, Le 1 and L’Opinion beginning to voice public support for Macron. Following several controversies surrounding trade unionists and their protests, major newspapers began to run stories about Macron and En marche on their front page with mainly positive press. This was criticized hugely by the far-left in France and the far-right with the term “Macronite” being coined to describe the pro-Macron influence within the press. The term has been expanded among the left-wing to also criticize the centrist leanings of most newspapers and their influence among left wing voter bases.

Macron was invited to attend a festival in Orléans by mayor Olivier Carré in May 2016, the festival is organized every year to celebrate Orléans’ liberation by Joan of Arc. France Info and LCI reported that Macron had attached the Republican values of the Fifth Republic to Joan of Arc and then in a speech, he compared himself to Joan of Arc. Macron later went Puy du Fou and declared he was “not a socialist” in a speech amid rumours he was going to leave the current government.

On 30 August 2016, Macron resigned from the government ahead of the 2017 presidential election, to devote himself to his En marche movement. There had been rising tensions and several reports that he wanted to leave the Valls government since early 2015. Macron initially planned to leave after the cancellation of his “Macron 2” law but after a meeting with President François Hollande, he decided to stay and an announcement was planned to declare that Macron was committed to the government (though the announcement was pushed back due to the attacks in Nice and Normandy). Michel Sapin was announced as Macron’s replacement. Speaking on Macron’s resignation, Hollande said he had been “betrayed”. According to an IFOP poll, 84% of French agreed with Macron’s decision to resign.

Macron first showed intention to run with the formation of En marche but following his resignation from the government, he was able to spend more time dedicating himself to his movement. He first announced that he was considering running for president in April 2016 and after his resignation from the position of economy minister, media sources began to find patterns in Macron’s fundraising and typical presidential campaign fundraising tactics. In October 2016, Macron criticized Hollande’s goal of being a “normal” president, saying that France needed a more “Jupiterian presidency”.

On 16 November 2016, Macron formally declared his candidacy for the French presidency after months of speculation. In his announcement speech, Macron called for a “democratic revolution” and promised to “unblock France”. Macron had wished that Hollande would join the race several months beforehand, saying that Hollande was the legitimate candidate for the Socialist Party. A book was published on 24 November 2016 by Macron to support his campaign titled “Révolution”, the book sold nearly 200,000 copies during its printing run and was one of the best selling books in France during 2016.

Macron’s campaign, headed by French economist Sophie Ferracci, announced in December 2016 that it had raised 3.7 million euros in donations without public funding (as En marche was not a registered political party). This was three times the budget of then-front runner Alain Juppé. Macron came under criticism from several individuals, including Benoît Hamon who requested Macron reveal a list of his donors accusing him of conflicts of interest due to Macron’s past at Rothschilds. Macron replied to this, calling Hamon’s behaviour “demagogic.” It was later reported by journalists Marion L’Hour and Frédéric Says that Macron had spent €120,000 on setting up dinners and meetings with various personalities within the media and in French popular culture while he was minister. Macron was then accused by deputies, Christian Jacob and Philippe Vigier of using this money to further the representation of En Marche in French political life. Michel Sapin, his successor and Minister of Economy saw nothing illegal about Macron’s actions saying that Macron had the right to spend the funds. Macron said in response to these allegations that it was “defamatory” and that none of the ministerial budget had been spent on his party.

In the past, Macron has called himself a socialist, but he has labelled himself as a centrist liberal since August 2015. He has refused observations by critics that he is an “ultra-liberal” economically. During a visit to Vendee in August 2016, he said he was not a socialist and that he just served in a “left wing government.” He has called himself both a “man of the left” and “liberal” in his book Révolution. Macron has since been labelled a libertarian with a socially liberal viewpoint.

Macron has been compared to former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing due to their ability to win a presidential election on a centrist platform and for their similar governing styles. Both were inspectors of finance, were given responsibilities based around tax and revenue, both were very ambitious about running for the position of president, showing their keenness early in their careers and both were seen as figures of renewal in French political life. d’Estaing even said himself in 2016 that he was “a little like Macron.” Observers have noted that while they are alike ideologically, d’Estaing had ministerial experience and time in Parliament to show for his political life while Macron had never been elected before.

Regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Macron stated in June 2016 that “the conditions [to sign the treaty] are not met”, adding that “we mustn’t close the door entirely” and “need a strong link with the US”.

In June 2016, he criticized the austerity policies imposed on Greece, considering them to be unsustainable and calling for the joint establishment of “fiscal and financial solidarity mechanisms” and a mechanism for restructuring the debt of Eurozone member states. Yanis Varoufakis, minister of finance in the First Cabinet of Alexis Tsipras, praised Macron, calling him “the only French Minister in the François Hollande’s administration that seemed to understand what was at stake in the Eurozone” and who, according to him, “tried to play the intermediary between us [Greece] and the troika of our creditors EC, IMF, ECB even if they don’t allow him to play the role”.

In 2016, Macron proposed that France “secures its supplies in the most strategic materials using three levers: the circular economy and the recovery of materials contained in the end of life of the products […]; the diversification of supplies to overcome geopolitical risks […] and to bring more competitiveness; the creation of new reasonably-sized mines in France, while following the best social and environmental standards”.

Although he is sceptical about the construction of the Aéroport du Grand Ouest, Macron stated he believed the construction should start since the people backed the project in the 2016 local referendum. However, after Macron’s inauguration, Prime Minister Philippe said that the plans for construction would be abandoned. He criticized Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord on 2 June 2017, and called for scientists to come to France in order to work together on climate change. On 19 September 2017, he launched a summit on the margins of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly to call for the adoption of a Global Pact for the Environment.

Macron supports the principle of secularism (laïcité). He also said that “we have a duty to let everybody practice their religion with dignity”. In July 2016, at the first meeting of En marche, Macron expressed opposition to banning Muslim headscarves in universities, stating, “Personally, I do not believe we should be inventing new texts, new laws, new standards, in order to hunt down veils at universities and go after people who wear religious symbols during field trips.”

After a range of comparisons to centrist, François Bayrou, Bayrou announced he was not going to stand in the presidential election and instead form an electoral alliance with Macron which went into effect on 22 February 2017, and has since lasted with En marche and the Democratic Movement becoming allies in the National Assembly. Following this, Macron’s poll ratings began to rise and after several legal issues surrounding François Fillon become publicized, Macron overtook him in the polls to become the front runner after polls shown him beating National Front candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round.

On 23 April 2017, Macron received the most votes in the first round of the presidential election, with 24% of the overall vote and more than 8 million votes all together. He progressed to the second round with Marine Le Pen. Former candidates François Fillon and Benoît Hamon voiced their support for Macron.

Macron qualified for the run-off against National Front candidate Marine Le Pen on 23 April 2017, after coming first place in the vote count. Following the announcement of his qualification, François Fillon and Benoît Hamon expressed support for Macron. President François Hollande also endorsed Macron. Many foreign politicians voiced support for Macron in his bid against right-wing populist candidate Marine Le Pen, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and former US President Barack Obama.

A debate was arranged between Macron and Le Pen on 3 May 2017. The debate lasted for 2 hours and Macron was considered the winner due to opinion polls.

In March 2017, Macron’s digital campaign manager, Mounir Mahjoubi, told Britain’s Sky News that Russia is behind “high level attacks” on Macron, and said that its state media are “the first source of false information”. He said: “We are accusing RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik News (of being) the first source of false information shared about our candidate …”.

Two days before the French Presidential Election on 7 May, it was reported that nine gigabytes of Macron’s campaign emails had been anonymously posted to Pastebin, a document-sharing site. These documents were then spread onto the imageboard 4chan which led to the hashtag “#macronleaks” trending on Twitter. In a statement on the same evening, Macron’s political movement, En marche, said: “The En marche movement has been the victim of a massive and coordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information”. Macron’s campaign had been presented a report before in March 2017 by the Japanese cyber security firm Trend Micro detailing how En marche had been the target of phishing attacks. Trend Micro said that the group conducting these attacks were Russian hacking group Fancy Bear who were also accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee on 22 July 2016. These same emails were verified and released in July 2017 by WikiLeaks. This was following Le Pen accusing Macron of tax avoidance.

On 7 May 2017, Macron was elected President of France with 66.1% of the vote compared to Marine Le Pen’s 33.9%. The election had record abstention at 25.4% and 8% of ballots being blank or spoilt. Macron resigned from his role as president of En marche and Catherine Barbaroux became interim leader.

Macron qualified for the runoff after the first round of the election on 23 April 2017. He won the second round of the presidential election on 7 May by a landslide according to preliminary results, making the candidate of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, concede. At 39, he became the youngest president in French history and the youngest French head of state since Napoleon. He is also the first president of France born after the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

In the 2017 legislative election, Macron’s party La République en marche and its Democratic Movement allies secured a comfortable majority, winning 350 seats out of 577. After The Republicans emerged as the winners of the Senate elections, government spokesman Christophe Castaner stated the elections were a “failure” for his party.

The National Assembly including the Senate approved the proposal, allowing the government to loosen the labour laws after negotiations with unions and employers’ groups. The reforms, which were discussed with unions, limit payouts for dismissals deemed unfair and give companies greater freedom to hire and fire employees as well as to define acceptable working conditions. The president signed five decrees reforming the labour rules on 22 September. Government figures released in October 2017 revealed that during the legislative push to reform the labour code, the unemployment rate had dropped 1.8%, the biggest since 2001.

Pierre de Villiers, then-Chief of the General Staff of the Armies, stepped down on 19 July 2017 following a confrontation with Macron. De Villiers cited the military budget cut of €850 million as the main reason he was stepping down. Le Monde later reported that De Villiers told a parliamentary group, “I will not let myself be fucked like this.” Macron named François Lecointre as De Villiers’ replacement.

In February 2017, Macron announced a plan to offer voluntary redundancy in an attempt to further cut jobs from the French civil service. In December 2019, Macron informed that he would scrap 20th century Byzantine pension system and introduce a single nations pension system managed by the state. In January 2020, after weeks of public transport shutdown and vandalization across Paris against the new pension plan, Macron compromised the plan by revizing the retirement age. In February, the pension overhaul was adopted by decree using Article 49 of the French constitution.

In July 2017, the Senate approved its first reading of a controversial bill with stricter anti-terror laws, a campaign pledge of Macron. The National Assembly voted on 3 October to pass the bill 415–127, with 19 abstentions. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb described France as being “still in a state of war” ahead of the vote, with the 1 October Marseille stabbing having taken place two days prior. The Senate then passed the bill on its second reading by a 244–22 margin on 18 October. Later that day Macron stated that 13 terror plots had been foiled since 2017 began. The law replaced the state of emergency in France and made some of its provisions permanent.

The law gives authorities expanded power to search homes, restrict movement, close places of worship, and search areas around train stations as well as international ports and airports. It was passed after modifications to address concerns about civil liberties. The most punitive measures will be reviewed annually and are scheduled to lapse by the end of 2020. The bill was signed into law by Macron on 30 October 2017. He announced that, starting 1 November, it would bring an end to the state of emergency.

Macron attended the 2017 Brussels summit on 25 May 2017, his first NATO summit as president of France. At the summit, he met US President Donald Trump for the first time. The meeting was widely publicized due to a handshake between the two of them being characterized as a “power-struggle”.

On 29 May 2017, Macron met with Vladimir Putin at the Palace of Versailles. The meeting sparked controversy when Macron denounced Russia Today and Sputnik accusing the news agencies of being “organs of influence and propaganda, of lying propaganda”. Macron also urged cooperation in the conflict against ISIS and warned that France would respond with force in Syria if chemical weapons are used. In response to the chemical attack in Douma, Syria in 2018, Macron directed French participation in airstrikes against Syrian government sites, coordinated with the United States and the United Kingdom.

An IFOP poll on 24 June 2017 said that 64 per cent of French people were pleased with Macron’s performance. In the IFOP poll on 23 July 2017, Macron suffered a 10 per cent point drop in popularity, the largest for any president since Jacques Chirac in 1995. 54 per cent of French people approved of Macron’s performance a 24 percentage point drop in three months. The main contributors to this drop in popularity are his recent confrontations with former Chief of Defence Staff Pierre de Villiers, the nationalization of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard owned by the bankrupt STX Offshore & Shipbuilding, and the reduction in housing benefit. In August 2017, IFOP polls stated that 40 per cent approved and 57 per cent disapproved of his performance.

In April 2017, Macron called for a “rebalancing” of Germany’s trade surplus, saying that “Germany benefits from the imbalances within the Eurozone and achieves very high trade surpluses”.

In January 2017, he said France needed a more “balanced” policy toward Syria, including talks with Bashar al-Assad. In April 2017, following the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Macron proposed a possible military intervention against the Assad regime, preferably under United Nations auspices. He has warned if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons during his presidency he will act unilaterally to punish it.

Macron has called for a peaceful solution during the 2017 North Korea crisis, though he agreed to work with US President Trump against North Korea. Macron and Trump apparently conducted a phone call on 12 August 2017 where they discussed confronting North Korea, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and enforcing new sanctions.

On 1 May 2017, Macron said the EU needs to reform or face Frexit. On 26 September, he unveiled his proposals for the EU, intending to deepen the bloc politically and harmonize its rules. He argued for institutional changes, initiatives to promote EU, along with new ventures in the technology, defence and energy sectors. His proposals also included setting up a rapid reaction force working along with national armies while establishing a finance minister, budget and parliament for the Eurozone. He also called for a new tax on technology giants, an EU-wide asylum agency to deal with the refugee crisis, and changes to the Common Agricultural Policy.

President Macron supports NATO and its role in the security of eastern European states and he also said pressure NATO partners like Poland to uphold what he called “European values”. He said in April 2017 that “in the three months after I’m elected, there will be a decision on Poland. You cannot have a European Union which argues over every single decimal place on the issue of budgets with each country, and which, when you have an EU member which acts like Poland or Hungary on issues linked to universities and learning, or refugees, or fundamental values, decides to do nothing.” Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said in response that Macron “violated European standards and the principles of friendship with Poland”.

During a press conference with Vladimir Putin at the Palace of Versailles in May 2017, he condemned the Russian state media as “lying propaganda.” At the same month, he said that “we all know who Le Pen’s allies are. The regimes of Orbán, Kaczyński, Putin. These aren’t the regimes with an open and free democracy. Every day they break many democratic freedoms.”

In July 2017, while at a ceremony at the site of the Vélodrome d’Hiver where 13,000 Jews had been rounded up for deportation to death camps in July 1942, Macron denounced his country’s role in the Holocaust and the historical revisionism that denied France’s responsibility for the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup and the eventual deportation of 76,000 Jews. Earlier that year, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, had stated in speeches that the government during WWII “was not France”.

In August 2017, a photojournalist was arrested and detained by the police for six hours after he entered the private residence where Macron was vacationing in Marseille. Macron subsequently filed a complaint for “harassment.” In September 2017, he dropped the complaint “as a gesture of appeasement.”

On 27 August 2017, President Macron and his wife Brigitte adopted Nemo, a black Labrador Retriever-Griffon dog who lives with them in the Élysée Palace. As a schoolboy, Macron took the decision to be baptized as a Catholic. In June 2018, prior to meeting Pope Francis, he identified himself as an Agnostic Catholic. In the same year he accepted being made an honorary canon of St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome.

Speaking on refugees and, specifically, the Calais Jungle, Macron said on 16 January 2018 that he would not allow another refugee camp to form in Paris before outlining the government policy towards immigration and asylum. He has also announced plans to speed up asylum applications and deportations but give refugees better housing.

On 23 June 2018, President Macron said: “The reality is that Europe is not experiencing a migration crisis of the same magnitude as the one it experienced in 2015”, “a country like Italy has not at all the same migratory pressure as last year. The crisis we are experiencing today in Europe is a political crisis”. In November 2019, Macron introduced new immigration rules to restrict the number of refugees reaching France, while stating to “take back control” of the immigration policy.

Visiting Corsica in February 2018, Macron sparked controversy when he rejected nationalist wishes for Corsican as an official language but offered to recognize Corsica in the French constitution.

Macron’s popularity fell sharply in 2018, reaching about 25% by the end of November. Dissatisfaction with his presidency has been expressed by protestors in the yellow vests movement.

On 18 July 2018, Le Monde revealed in an article that a member of Macron’s staff Alexandre Benalla posed as a police officer and beat a protester during May Day demonstrations in Paris earlier in the year and was suspended for a period of 15 days before only being internally demoted. The Élysée failed to refer the case to the public prosecutor and a preliminary investigation into the case was not opened until the day after the publication of the article, and the lenient penalty served by Benalla raised questions within the opposition about whether the executive deliberately chose not to inform the public prosecutor as required under the code of criminal procedure.

In March 2018, Macron announced that the government would spend 1.5 billion euros ($1.9 billion) on artificial intelligence in order to boost innovation. The money would be used to sponsor research projects and scientific laboratories, as well as to finance startup companies within the country whose focus is AI.

He supports the continuation of President Hollande’s policies on Israel, opposes the BDS movement, and has refused to state a position on recognition of the State of Palestine. In May 2018, Macron condemned “the violence of Israeli armed forces” against Palestinians in Gaza border protests.

In June 2018 the Aquarius (NGO ship) carrying 629 migrants that were rescued near Libya was denied entry to the Sicilian port by Italy’s new interior minister Matteo Salvini. Italian PM Giuseppe Conte accused France of hypocrisy after Macron said Italy was acting “irresponsibly” by refusing entry to migrants and suggested it had violated international maritime law. Italy’s deputy PM Luigi Di Maio said: “I am happy the French have discovered responsibility . . . they should open their ports and we will send a few people to France.”

In 2018, Macron announced that France would commit 700 million euros to the International Solar Alliance, a treaty-based alliance to expand solar power infrastructure. In the same year, Macron announced that France would phase out coal power, with the target of shutting down all coal-fired power stations (which make up about 1% of French energy generation) by 2021.

In 2018, he pursued a petrol tax, albeit, the tax stems from an earlier policy under his predecessor, François Hollande. A burgeoning grassroots movement, the Gilets jaunes protests developed throughout France in November and December, extending even to the overseas territory of Réunion. On 4 December, Prime minister Édouard Philippe announced that the tax increase would be pushed back six months. The following day however, Macron scrapped the fuel tax increase altogether.

In November 2018 he referred to nationalism as the “exact opposite” of patriotism, and a betrayal of it, characterizing nationalism as “who cares about others”. This prompted criticism that his definition was wrong. Macron is accused by members of the Yellow vests of being an “ultra-liberal president for the rich”.

Following the declaration of independence by Catalonia, Macron joined the EU in supporting Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy. In a conversation with BBC’s Andrew Marr, Macron stated that theoretically if France should choose to withdraw from the EU, they would do so through a national popular vote. In November 2019, Macron blocked EU accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia, proposing changes to EU Enlargement policy. In an interview with The Economist, Macron explained that the EU was too reliant on NATO and the US, and that it should initiate “strategic dialogue” with Russia.

After the European elections in 2019, it was Macron in particular who prevented the leading candidate of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, as president of the European Commission. Previously it was a tradition that always the top candidate of the largest party took over this post. Critics accuse Macron of having ignored by his actions the democratic decision of the voters for power-political reasons, and thus sacrificed the democratic principles of his own interests.

In October 2019, Macron warned that Turkey would be responsible for helping Islamic State to re-establish a Caliphate in Syria as he called on Turkey to stop its military offensive against Kurdish forces the north of Syria.

On 13 January 2019, he penned a 2,300-word letter addressing the nation in response to 9 consecutive weeks of protests by the Gilets jaunes movement, calling for 3 months of national debate to address grievances.

In July 2020, Macron called for sanctions against Turkey for the violation of Greece’s and Cyprus’ sovereignty, saying it is “not acceptable that the maritime space of (EU) member states be violated and threatened.” He also criticized Turkish military intervention in Libya. Macron said that “We have the right to expect more from Turkey than from Russia, given that it is a member of NATO.”

On 2 October 2020, he unveiled a plan to defend France’s secular values against what he termed as “Islamist radicalism”, saying the religion was “in crisis” all over the world, prompting a backlash from Muslim activists. He announced that the government would present a bill in December to strengthen a 1905 law that officially separated church and state in France. Macron faced further backlash when after the murder of Samuel Paty, he defended the caricatures of Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo. Many Muslims called for French products to be boycotted in their countries, while European leaders supported his remarks.

On 2 October 2020, Macron announced his intention to ban homeschooling with medical exceptions by 2021 in order to address separatist Islamic indoctrination that he sees as in conflict with the secular values of the French Republic.