A smooth organisation, popular euphoria, a France celebrated internationally: Emmanuel Macron could hope to benefit from the success of the Olympic Games, but experts believe that the head of state will quickly be caught up in the political crisis.
After months of denigration of the Games, predicting hell in Paris, between maximum security and poor transport, the Olympic fortnight, launched by an opening ceremony widely applauded despite some controversies, is taking place in a festive atmosphere, with smooth metros, smiling police officers, delighted tourists…
“The biggest surprise of the Olympic Games in Paris: even the French have nothing to complain about,” summed up the Wall Street Journal.
“The fact that things are going well, that we are seen as beautiful and successful abroad, it strikes a chord in a country that was experiencing decline and was no longer capable of doing great things collectively,” comments opinion specialist Emmanuel Rivière.
“In a fractured country like France, sport is a ritual that allows the nation to reunite without political mediation,” underlines political scientist Stéphane Rozès.
But will President Emmanuel Macron, who was heavily involved in the organisation and who has tweeted and made appearances with French athletes, be credited with this success?
“The sequence is unfavourable to the declinist discourse and corresponds more to the Macronist discourse on attractive France”, points out Jean-Daniel Lévy, deputy director of Harris Interactive. “This can boost the morale of the executive’s supporters who were depressed by the sequence of European (elections) and dissolution”, adds Emmanuel Rivière.
On the evening of the European elections, which saw the triumph of the extreme right, the French president decided to dissolve the National Assembly, plunging the country into a political crisis. The lower house of parliament is now divided into three blocs. Mr. Macron said he would not appoint a new prime minister before the end of the Olympic Games “in mid-August.”
However, for the three experts, the effect for the head of state will be at best “fleeting”. “It changes the collective climate but not the political situation: the situation remains blocked, many voters are frustrated… The French remain very angry with Emmanuel Macron”, judges Mr. Rivière.
“We will very quickly come up against the political reality resulting from the legislative elections,” comments Mr. Rozès.
The first poll conducted since the start of the Olympics — on July 30 and 31 — showed only a two-point increase in the president’s approval rating, to 27%.
“Not a partisan success”
“The country needed this moment of fraternization. Afterwards, on the political impact, I am still very reserved,” confides a minister. “Even if Emmanuel Macron validated the smallest detail, it is the success of an organization, we cannot make it a partisan success,” considers another.
“There will be a form of post-Olympic indulgence, but it won’t last long,” predicts a Macronist executive. “It will relax the game in the sense that the idea of working together will be less absurd. But it’s not because we took selfies in front of the cauldron with half of Paris that, all of a sudden, we’re going to form a coalition,” he puts into perspective.
The popular euphoria is reminiscent of that of the 1998 football World Cup, organised and won for the first time by France.
At the time, President Jacques Chirac had surfed on the victory of this “Black, White, Arab” France, even though he was neither a sports fan nor in the front row of the organization a year after the failed dissolution of 1997 and the victory of the left.
His approval rating had jumped by more than ten points in a month, to over 60% favourable opinions, just like that of the socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.
But “unemployment, which was the main concern of the French, was decreasing every month. The Jospin government was in a positive dynamic and we were in a peaceful cohabitation,” recalls Emmanuel Rivière.
On the contrary, in 2024, “the contrast will be such between this moment of national unity and the spectacle of France’s ungovernability” that Stéphane Rozès even fears “a backlash” against Emmanuel Macron.