Emmanuel Macron seeks to regain his position on the international stage

President Emmanuel Macron will seek to reassert France’s strong position on the international stage, particularly after two months of political chaos in his country, on Tuesday and Wednesday at the UN General Assembly and then Thursday in Canada.

Since the dissolution of the National Assembly on June 9, Macron has been facing a domestic political crisis as no bloc has been able to obtain the absolute majority needed to form a government.

Although it was formed on Saturday under the leadership of Michel Barnier, who will have to impose his team, which is already under criticism, the French president will remain at the mercy of extremists.

“The UN General Assembly is an opportunity for Emmanuel Macron, to prove that France still has the capacity to be present on the international scene,” Michel Duclos, a former ambassador and special adviser at the Institute Montaigne in Paris, told AFP in an interview.

For his part, Bertrand Badie, an international relations specialist at the Institute of Political Sciences, said, “Every destabilized political system has weaker credibility and capacity to act”.

Badi added, “It’s an unprecedented shift in the way the world looks at it”.

This is something that France has been able to avoid in the past, as it has been known for the solidity of its institutions since the beginning of the Fifth Republic, the political system in force in France since October 4, 1958.

In recent years, France has been expelled from the African Sahel as military regimes in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have turned away from the former colonial power and moved closer to Russia to combat jihadist violence, while the country has partially reduced its efforts in the Middle East as the president paid the price for his stance of dialogue with Russia at the start of the war in Ukraine.

The repercussions of the French political crisis are reaching Brussels.

The latest example is the resignation of French Commissioner Thierry Breton following a confrontation with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, with whom he had a tense relationship.

“This means that the president (Emmanuel Macron) doesn’t feel strong enough to resist the Commission president,” MEP Bernard Guetta, who is close to the presidential camp, told France 5, adding, “Yes, France has become weaker”.

Over the summer, Macron was in contact with all parties involved in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

After a series of explosions of communication devices used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, the French president addressed the Lebanese directly in a video, stressing that the diplomatic path was still possible despite the risk of war.

On the other hand, he remained more reserved on the Ukraine issue when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer discussed with US President Joe Biden the possibility of allowing Kiev to use long-range missiles against Russia.

During the UN General Assembly meetings, which the French president didn’t attend in 2023, Macron will speak at various forums and will deliver a speech at UN headquarters on Wednesday.

“We’re at a point within the international community where we must rebuild ties and find areas of convergence… This is what the President of the Republic will focus on during the two days he will spend in New York,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement.

Macron is expected to meet some of his counterparts from the Middle East, the G7 and the G20.

A meeting with Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, hasn’t yet been confirmed.

He will then travel to Canada to relaunch the strategic partnership between the two allies with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

According to Bertrand Badie, “that might not be enough… The UN General Assembly is a diplomacy of words and beautiful speeches… That served Macron at the beginning, it gave him a certain aura, but today we no longer see many expectations towards him”.

For his part, former Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin pointed out that France is decaying and that “presidential software has become obsolete” on the international scene.

However, Michel Duclos considered that Emmanuel Macron retains a certain personal status, and is recognized as having ideas and skills.

Duclos concluded, “In this context, New York will be a test of Macron’s international credibility”.