Complications follow one another. Since his very first election, which immediately opened the doors of the Elysée Palace to him, Emmanuel Macron has constantly thrown himself headlong into trouble; some of whom even blame him for having sometimes spawned them. Difficult, for example, not to think of the Yellow Vests who, for a long time, challenged the President of the Republic. Then there was the health crisis… which is still not over, as evidenced even today by the eighth wave regularly documented by Planet.

However, none of this seemed to have worn out the President of the Republic. It may have sometimes appeared “livid”, or “agitated”, of course, but the reforming ambition was there. Now, some of his relatives are wondering, observes Europe 1 on its site. The Head of State would have lost “the combativeness he had a few months ago”, inform our colleagues. Nothing today can stimulate it. Not even the traditional council of ministers, whose usefulness he now doubts. “Listening to his ministers speak, it fed him”, abounds a member of the government whose name is not communicated.

The confidants of the Head of State interviewed by the radio confirm: he would simply not be “in it anymore”. And there is nothing very surprising about this… since the center of gravity of power is no longer really at the Château, nor even at Matignon: it has now moved, in many respects, to the Palais Bourbon where the deputies sit . In the absence of a strong majority, the President of the Republic must now learn to compromise.

“Emmanuel Macron practiced for five years a self-defined power as Jupiterian. He was the one-man band, with omniscient and omnipresent power. From now on, this vision of the presidential role is contested by the electorate”, observes Sylvain Boulouque, political historian, specializing in the history of communists and anarchists on whom he wrote several books such as Mensonges en gilet jaune (ed. Serge Safran) or The people of the black flag, a history of anarchists (ed. Atlande) .

But what does this mean, exactly, for the rest of the quinquennium?

Some might think that the current situation is the result of a simple “slack move” by the president. However, it is clear that the results of the legislative elections were disappointing for Emmanuel Macron, today deprived of his absolute majority. “There is reason to feel disavowed by the electorate, which is partly true. Benefiting only from a very relative majority will have a direct consequence on his way of governing. This is already destabilizing his power mechanics”, continues the researcher, who teaches at the University of Nanterre.

“In itself, two options are now available to the Head of State”, continues Sylvain Boulouque, before detailing: “He can either make an alliance with Les Républicains, as he has already started to do on a certain number of subjects to carry out some of its social (or anti-social, it depends) reforms, such as those of pensions. For questions affecting more society, such as the inclusion of abortion in the constitution or the euthanasia, he will turn more to the left”.

In short, Emmanuel Macron will have to play the famous “at the same time” again. However, things are different today. “He no longer has complete control over this at the same time, which will necessarily be more horizontal than it could have been and which will be played out according to alliances as well as political recompositions. He is not no longer quite the master of clocks that he was”, asserts the teacher.

Have other presidents suffered from the same second-term blues?

Is the wear and tear on power that Emmanuel Macron is experiencing today comparable to that which some other heads of state have felt? For the historian, yes, to a certain extent.

“We have observed similar phenomena with other presidents, but not with all those who have been elected a second time. De Gaulle, for example, did not show any particular fatigue…Even though his situation was quite In the case of Mitterrand, it would be dishonest not to mention his illness, which seems to have tired him more than the exercise of power strictly speaking, given the number of structural reforms he carried out during his second term. Chirac, on the other hand, saw his power crumble after social protest in response to the reform of the CPA”, recalls Sylvain Boulouque.

Will Emmanuel Macron face, like Jacques Chirac before him, a new unprecedented social movement? Hard to say: the spontaneous birth of these makes them extremely difficult to predict, says the specialist.