Do we like Emmanuel Macron?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real wins on abortion and standing up to Russia, set against stigmatising trans comments, a hardline immigration law and a contentious rights-watchdog pick.
Macron is in the final stretch of his second term, which ends in 2027. He's told reporters he'll leave active politics, saying “I wasn't in politics before and I'm not going to be after.” His aides reportedly hope his image recovers the way Jacques Chirac's did after he left office.
The recent news is rough. Protests over living costs, fuel prices and public services turned violent on a Saturday in October, with shops looted and Limoges' 143-year-old town hall largely destroyed in an arson attack. Reuters reports that more than half a million people marched and one protester died. The government blames hard-left groups and criminals for the violence, while the protesters are angry at him.
Now the harm check, and this is where it gets uncomfortable. In June 2024 he told residents that under the left's plan anyone could go “to the town hall to change [their] sex”, and called the pledge “gruesome”. Progressistes LGBT+, a queer group that backs him, said it deeply regretted comments that stigmatise trans people. His former minister Clément Beaune also called for rejecting stigma.
In July 2026 he nominated senator François-Noël Buffet as the country's rights ombudsman, and lawmakers approved him 43 votes to 39. Buffet protested against same-sex marriage in 2013 and voted against extending assisted reproduction to single women and lesbian couples in 2021. A gay and lesbian parents' group called the pick “both absurd and scary”, and staff in the office reportedly expressed dismay.
On immigration, he promulgated a 2023 law that Human Rights Watch and other groups called the most repressive since 1945. They say it lifted deportation protections, cut young people out of child welfare services and made asylum refusals almost automatic. The Constitutional Council found nearly 40 per cent of the law non-compliant, mostly on procedural grounds, per HRW.
The good side is real. In March 2024 France's parliament voted 780 to 72 to write women's freedom to have an abortion into the constitution, and Macron called it a source of “French pride”. In July 2025 he announced France would recognise Palestine, which he called the “only viable path” for Israelis and Palestinians. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as a push for peace or a gift to one side. In February he backed pressure on Russia over Ukraine, saying the answer cannot be to cave in to Moscow.