Caught between police and protesters, Macron’s Centrist Balancing Act is falling apart

That has put Mr. Macron in an awkward corner. At a recent emergency meeting with Mr. Darmanin, a 38-year-old Conservative firefighter, and other senior members of his cabinet, was Mr. Macron furious.

“The situation you placed me in could have been avoided,” Mr. Macron, 42, told Mr. Darmanin, according to people familiar with the case. Mr. Darmanin, they said, was unmoved.

For years, Mr Macron ruled as a technocrat, rewriting France’s secretive labor law to reboot the economy and try to restore the European Union’s financial sanitary ware.

On issues of law and order – including the long-standing tensions between the police and Muslim minorities living in the banlieues of the working class – Mr. Macron has largely deferred to Mr. Darmanin and his predecessors at the Ministry of the Interior.

Mr. Macron’s modus operandi: stay above the battle, express an opinion in one breath, then say, “On the other hand…” in the next.

However, that kind of politics is unraveling. Mr Macron’s party and cabinet have drifted to the right, and the president finds he can no longer avoid the culture wars that have long ravaged French society.

The shift became apparent this year when Mr Macron’s party, Republic on the Move, lost numerous mayoral elections in June, including in Paris. Defects by left-wing lawmakers followed, costing Mr Macron his absolute majority in Parliament.

Then in October the president gave a speech disapproving of what he called “ Islamist separatism ” – a movement, he said, that aimed to undermine the values ​​of the French Republic, particularly the principle of strict secularism known as laicite. Two deadly terrorist attacks followed, including the beheading of a schoolteacher and probes from mosques across the country. Critics in the Muslim world and in the international media accused Macron of a right-wing tilt that stigmatized French Muslims.

While leftist support fell, Mr. Macron sat down for an interview with Brut, a news website popular with young people. Mr. Macron defended aspects of Mr. Darmanin’s police protection law without saying whether he supported restrictions on posting images of agents online.

“I share the same goal: to protect police officers. What I don’t want is for us to reduce our freedoms to achieve that goal, ”said Mr Macron.

Instead, he gave a technical criticism of the bill’s provision, saying it did nothing to prevent images of police from being published from servers in Belgium or Italy.

“Even if (the provision) was what some wrote about it, it was ineffective at best,” said Mr Macron.

While Mr Macron continues to cover, Mr Darmanin is increasing the pressure with the support of a troubled national police force.

Mr Darmanin’s appointment in July was controversial from the outset. Darmanin is under investigation by French prosecutors for alleged rape of a woman in 2009 – allegations he denies.

Mr. Darmanin was a former member of the conservative party Les Républicains with a history of leading barbs against Mr. Macron. “Rather than being the cure for a sick country, it will be the final poison,” Mr Darmanin wrote of Mr Macron a few months before his election in 2017.

After the murder of George Floyd in the US this spring, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in France to express their outrage at the fate of Mr. Floyd and that of a Frenchman of African descent who died in police custody four years earlier. A report commissioned by that man’s family, Adama Traoré, concluded in June that he likely choked after police pushed him to the ground.

According to French officials, Macron instructed his then-interior minister – Christophe Castaner, a close lieutenant – to review police practices to allay protesters’ concerns. Mr. Castaner responded with a plan to ban chokeholds – which put pressure on a suspect’s neck – and to systematically suspend police officers suspected of racism.

The response from the police, who had worked many hours to enforce France’s Covid-19 lockdown, was fierce. Police unions denied allegations of racism and launched a series of counter-protests. Some threw their handcuffs on the floor and called for Mr. Castaner to resign.

Frédéric Veaux, the director of the French National Police, wrote a letter to his armed forces saying he felt their frustration with Macron’s government. “I share with you this feeling of profound injustice,” wrote Mr Veaux.

Macron shook his government and replaced Mr. Castaner with Mr. Darmanin, who met with the police and blessed their proposal to make it mandatory for people who publish images or videos of the police to blur the faces of officers. “I’ll make it my own,” he said.

In October, a group of lawmakers from Mr Macron’s party submitted a new bill to Parliament aimed at improving coordination between the national police, local police and private security ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Mr Darmanin worked with lawmakers to add a provision, Article 24, prohibiting the posting of photos and videos of police operations containing “the face or any other identifying element” of police officers for the purpose of “making them” physically or mentally. “to harm. .

In November, thousands of people, including journalists and human rights groups, took to the streets to protest the bill, saying it would prevent people from filming and exposing police brutality. According to journalists’ unions, several journalists who covered the protests have been beaten by the police, and at least two of them were held for hours.

On November 27, French news site Loopsider posted footage from a security camera in Michel Zecler’s music studio in Paris showing three police officers beating and beating him with a stick. According to Mr Zecler’s lawyer and the Paris prosecutors investigating the incident, Mr Zecler said that one of the officers called him a “dirty n …” in French while beating him. The video also shows that tear gas is used in the music studio.

Amid a public uproar over the footage, Macron’s government announced that it would revise Article 24 after acquitting the Senate, without saying how. Mr. Darmanin, for his part, sat for a photo shoot and interview with Paris Match, France’s leading magazine magazine. The interior minister finally graced the cover, alongside a quote: “I will not abandon police officers.”

Meanwhile, police unions complained to the president about comments he made to Brut about police practices. “It is true that today if the color of your skin is not white, you are much more held back,” said Mr. Macron.

Mr Macron wrote to Union Police Leader Yves Lefebvre to say he planned to organize a large meeting with police unions, mayors and civilians to discuss how to improve training and police resources. “I’ll be there in person,” he wrote.

Mr. Lefebvre accepted the invitation. Other police unions don’t have that.

Write to Noemie Bisserbe at [email protected] and Stacy Meichtry at [email protected]