He wants to stay five more years at the Elysée. Emmanuel Macron announced his candidacy for re-election late on March 3 in a letter to the French. The President of the Republic therefore puts on the clothes of a candidate while remaining the Head of State until the last day. A double hat which questions the way in which his speaking time is counted on television and on the radio.
From January 1 and until the elections of April 10 and 24, specific rules apply. In addition to “speaking time”, which TVs and radios must count, appears “air time”, a concept only used for the presidential election. This concept encompasses not only the word of the candidate, but also everything around it, for example the description by a journalist of a meeting.
From January 1 to March 27, the “principle of equity” of speaking time and airtime must be respected, according to the political weight of each. From 8 March, the date on which the official candidacies were made public, this “principle of fairness” is reinforced by the mention of “comparable programming conditions”. Arcom (ex-CSA) recommends that each candidate and his supporters have access to the four time slots (morning, day, evening, night) in an equitable manner. Thus, a channel will not be able to pass only the night of the meetings of a candidate with whom it has little affinity or whom it considers to be a “small” candidate.
For the duration of the official campaign (ie the two weeks preceding the first round), the principle of fairness will give way to strict equality of speaking and airtime granted to candidates and their supporters.
These rules also serve as a pretext for Emmanuel Macron’s team to refuse a debate before the first round. “No president in office who represents himself has done so”justified the outgoing president. “A 120-minute debate with 110 minutes of everything except Macron, in which he will have ten minutes to respond since there are 12 candidates, he may be good, he will not have time to respond”, provides a framework for the campaign.
In the context of a debate with the other candidates, things would indeed be clear. The Head of State speaking as a candidate, he would be subject to the same rules as the others.
But the case of the president in the campaign is more complex. Indeed, when he speaks within the framework of his sovereign prerogatives, his speaking time is not counted. A rule that already exists during normal periods but which continues to apply during election periods.
“When the president speaks with the royal cap, in particular on the war in Ukraine, it is not counted.”
“In this election, we manage to delimit quite easily the specific subject of Ukraine, which is a sovereign“, confirms Cyril Guinet, director of regulation, ethics and pluralism of antennas at France Télévisions. “For everything else, we ask ourselves the question. For example, let’s imagine that there is a flood somewhere in France and that Emmanuel Macron says that we have to review the land use plans, do we speaks as president or candidate? he raises. A complex equation.
The audiovisual media are responsible for this count, under the control of Arcom, which increases as the campaign progresses. The declarations were made every two weeks during the first two months of the year, they are now made every week. From March 28, media will be required to report speaking times and airtime every day.