One year after his departure from the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron is entering a decisive phase of his five-year term, where both the political assessment and the historical legacy are at stake. From Giscard to Hollande, the end of his mandate under the Fifth Republic reveals three strategies: prepare for the reconquest, organize his political testament or try to justify his action in the face of the judgment of the French
In a year, Emmanuel Macron will leave the Élysée. And already arises – as it posed for all his predecessors – the most delicate question at the end of a reign: how to occupy the last months of power when the essential assessment is already written, but the judgment of history is not yet?
Under the Ve Republic, the last presidential year has obviously never been a simple administrative epilogue, but on the contrary a revealer of political action. Some heads of state saw it as a means of recovery, others as a political testament.
Some still believed they could convince. The others knew that it was already necessary to organize the memory.
Giscard sure to win
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in 1980-1981, embodies the first category. He does not think of himself as an outgoing president, but as a reappointed president. Despite the wear and tear of power, the economic crisis, unemployment, the Bokassa diamond affair, the centrist remains convinced that the liberal and European modernization that he has initiated since 1974 can continue.
His last year is therefore not that of a withdrawal, but of a campaign before the campaign. He therefore does not prepare his exit and imagines, convinced that he will be re-elected, a second seven-year term.
Fatal error. Beaten by François Mitterrand, he even missed his exit by turning his back after saying “goodbye”.
Mitterrand and history
François Mitterrand lived 1994-1995 in a completely different state of mind. Illness, affairs, revelations about his private life, cohabitation with Édouard Balladur and the rise of the right create a truly twilight atmosphere.
But Mitterrand does not intend to suffer this inevitable end to power and he is going to stage it. Until the end, he inaugurates, watches, comments, transmits. The major works – from the National Library of France to the Cité de la Musique – become the visible stones of a perfectly thought out and desired heritage.
For him, the last year is almost monarchical: it no longer serves to conquer, but to register. “I am the last of the great presidents,” he told the journalist Georges-Marc Benamou, seeing himself as the last figure in the Gaullian lineage, before the era of “financiers and accountants”.
Bernard Pivot invited him on April 14, 1995 in a special “Bouillon de culture” on major works. Mitterrand, waxy complexion but lively mind, concedes “Yes, I like history and being part of history.”
Chirac’s messages
Jacques Chirac, in 2006-2007, adopted another form of will. Weakened by age, by twelve years of presidency and by a stroke, he gave up running for a third term.
His speech of March 11, 2007 where he announced his decision resembles less a personal farewell than a last Republican lesson. He addresses to the French “five messages” in which he defends secularism, the social model, political Europe, solidarity with poor countries, the “ecological revolution”, he who launched his famous “Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere”, during the IVe Earth Summit on September 2, 2002 in Johannesburg.
Chirac, obviously, then wants to establish for himself what we will remember about him: the refusal of the war in Iraq, the Vel d’Hiv speech, the social divide, rather than the failed dissolution of 1997 or the riots of 2005.
Sarkozy in battle
Five years later, in 2011-2012, Nicolas Sarkozy returned to a logic of combat. His last year is not an exit, but an offensive. Faced with the financial crisis, the euro crisis, the crisis in Libya, strong unpopularity and a contested economic record, he refuses the register of the will and presents himself as captain in the storm. Debt, unemployment, deficits? He opposes these figures with the argument of the crises experienced.
Like Giscard, Sarkozy is not yet thinking about what comes next. The hyper-president requests a new mandate to complete or correct what has been initiated. Weary! The French will not grant it and will prefer “change now”.
Hollande’s renunciation
François Hollande will open a completely new sequence. By announcing the 1is December 2016 that he will not be a candidate for re-election – lucid about his inability to bring together a fractured left – he becomes the first president of the Ve Republic to be renounced after a single mandate.
His last year at the Élysée then shifted into justification. He demands the fight against terrorism, the Paris climate agreement, improved employment, while recognizing the political error of forfeiture of nationality.
Renunciation becomes for him an attempt at institutional dignity: not adding the division of the left to the failure of an impossible candidacy.
Write the last page
It is in this mirror that Emmanuel Macron is now entering his last year. Unlike Giscard and Sarkozy, he cannot seek a new consecutive mandate. Unlike Mitterrand and Chirac, he left power relatively young. Unlike Hollande, he does not have to announce a renunciation: he is prevented by the Constitution. His last year will therefore be unique. It can be neither a campaign of reconquest nor a simple farewell ceremony.
A central question remains: what will he want to engrave? Europe, reindustrialization, work, attractiveness, state reform, strategic sovereignty? Or will it be overtaken by other images: the Yellow Vests, pension reform, the verticality of “Jupiterian” power, political fragmentation, the failed dissolution, the feeling of a country more divided than peaceful?
The end of mandate actually tells of three ways of leaving the Élysée. The denial of the end, among Giscard and Sarkozy. The assumed will, with Mitterrand and Chirac. Lucid justification, at Hollande.
All, however, come up against the same limit: a President never completely chooses what history will remember of him. He can certainly construct a story, prioritize his successes, downplay his failures – and Emmanuel Macron will undoubtedly be tempted to master the last page – but the trace is fixed elsewhere: in the ballot boxes, the archives, the crises and, above all, the collective memory of the French.
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