French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said he recognised that his decision to call early parliamentary elections in June had created more political instability in the country, in a rare moment of contrition.
The speech caps a tumultuous 2024 for Macron, who shocked the nation halfway through the year by calling early elections, a gamble that backfired when voters delivered a hung parliament with a big increase in far-right lawmakers, diluting Macron’s power.
“Lucidity and humility force (me) to recognise that at this stage, this decision has produced more instability than peace, and I fully own up to that,” Macron said in a televised address ahead of New Year celebrations.
“The dissolution caused more divisions in the Assembly than solutions for the French people,” he added, in the clearest mea culpa yet since the elections.
Macron had justified his decision to call early elections in the wake of a bad score at European elections by the need to “clarify” the political situation.
But he lost his workable majority and took two months to name a minority government, which eventually collapsed in December, the first time that happened in France since 1962.
As a result, France failed to approve a budget for 2025 before the end-of-year deadline, and Macron had to name his fourth prime minister this year, centrist veteran Francois Bayrou, in December.
Macron also opened the door to use referendums this year, without using the word, saying he would ask the French to decide on “decisive” issues, without elaborating which ones.
The French constitution grants powers to the president to initiate referendums.
Macron has also used “citizen conventions”, gatherings of randomly picked citizens without any binding power, in the past to quell revolts such as the
yellow vest rebellion on certain issues.