On 18 August, the geopolitical magazine « World Insight » hosted by Tian Wei on the Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN) looked at the declining approval rates for French President Emmanuel Macron. Albrecht Sonntag, who had already contributed to previous programmes during the election campaign in spring, was invited to give his analysis of this polling phenomenon, together with Daniel Gros, director of the CEPS think-tank in Brussels, and Paris-based political scientist Alexandre Andorra.
The discussants agreed that given his very stable majority in parliament, declining popularity rates were not a major issue for Macron. It was rather normal that the rapid concrete implementation of a series of campaign announcements generated dissatisfaction within a range of interest groups. According to Albrecht Sonntag, rather than popularity in the domestic environment, Macron was in need of accumulating credibility with his European partners. One might even say that at this moment, the President’s approval rates in Germany are more important than at home, if he wants to be able to move positions on several items of Eurozone governance and breathe new life into the French-German engine, especially after the German elections end of September.
The video of the live discussion (15 minutes) can be consulted here or by clicking on the picture below:
