Europe’s French Reprieve Macron beats Le Pen, but without growth the extremes will be back.

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-french-reprieve-1494186270

French voters chose a centrist reformer over the nationalist right on Sunday by electing Emmanuel Macron as their next President. The question now is whether Mr. Macron can deliver on his promise to reform France’s sclerotic economy and diminish the Islamist terror threat.

Mr. Macron’s decisive victory is as much a rejection of the far-right National Front as an endorsement of his platform. Despite Marine Le Pen’s yearslong effort to whitewash her party’s reputation for anti-Semitism and Vichy nostalgia, the keys to the Élysée Palace proved as elusive to her as they did to her father, Jean-Marie, in 2002’s presidential runoff against Jacques Chirac.

Mr. Macron deserves credit for his initiative. The 39-year-old former investment banker quit the incumbent Socialists to launch his independent centrist movement, En Marche! His outsider status and optimistic vision proved attractive to voters fed up with traditional political parties. He offered a clear if modest reform alternative, with proposals to shrink the bureaucracy, cut corporate taxes and modify the job-killing 35-hour workweek.

 He was also lucky. The center-right Republican nominee François Fillon, a self-proclaimed Thatcherite, was felled by allegations of nepotism. Independent, hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon divided the socialist vote. In the runoff Mr. Macron was the default choice of voters who wanted to block the National Front.

This means President Macron will have a fragile mandate and a narrow window to press his agenda. France needs radical reform of a government that in 2015 took 57% of national GDP and an economy with a jobless rate that is 10% eight years after the financial crisis.

Yet political failure is the recent French norm. Successive Presidents have failed to undo the 1999 35-hour-workweek law amid militant union protests. Mr. Mélenchon and his “Unbowed France” movement are promising chaos if Mr. Macron dares to advance what the socialist calls “neoliberalism.” Mr. Macron’s best bet is to go big and abolish the 35-hour workweek as Mr. Fillon promised, rather than seek marginal fixes and pay the political price anyway. The same goes for cutting the corporate tax rate to 25% from 33.3%, especially as the U.S. heads toward a 20% rate.

Mr. Macron’s ability to push reform will depend on the strength of the parliamentary coalition he can assemble. If En Marche! fails to win a majority in June’s parliamentary vote, he should hope the Republicans do. One way to set the tone for the June vote would be to invite Republican heavyweights to join the Macron cabinet.

The new President will also need help on national security, which was his weakest pitch to voters. While he committed to increasing capacity at the security agencies, Ms. Le Pen’s vows to fight radical Islam and toughen border controls appealed to voters who witnessed massacres across the country.

The toughest challenge is the self-isolation of too many of France’s six million Muslim citizens. French voters understood that Ms. Le Pen’s immigration crackdowns would do little to stop self-radicalization among native French Muslims. But Mr. Macron can help by speaking frankly about the threat and encouraging Muslims to see integration as a two-way street.

Mr. Macron is a French sort of Atlanticist, which means he’s wary of looking too pro-American. He accused the West of “constantly” escalating the Ukraine conflict, described Moscow as a “partner” and warned that the U.S. shouldn’t “dictate” French foreign policy, as if the latter ever happens. But perhaps the weekend dump of documents from his campaign, which bore the hallmarks of a Russian cyber operation, will open his eyes to the Kremlin threat.

As for European Union elites, the temptation will be to view the Macron triumph as vindication of the status quo, given Ms. Le Pen’s vow to leave the EU and ditch the euro. It is at most a reprieve. Ms. Le Pen improved on her father’s performance 15 years ago, she and Mr. Mélenchon drew broad support among the young, and France’s mainstream parties were repudiated. The EU project is far from secure unless it can provide more economic opportunity and better security, and show more respect for voters who resent dictates from Brussels.

The French center held, barely. If Mr. Macron fails to deliver faster growth, France may not be so lucky the next time.

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