Emmanuel Macron elected to second term as French president

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Emmanuel Macron elected to second term as French president

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, April 25th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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French voters re-elected Emmanuel Macron to a second term yesterday. It’s the first time France has re-elected a president in 20 years.

Leila Abboud
France has made a choice here to kind of be pro-European again, to stay sort of in the centrist western liberal democracy model, and it’s a big deal.

Marc Filippino
Also this weekend, EU lawmakers approved tough new rules for Big Tech. And Sri Lanka is working with the International Monetary Fund to find a way out of an economic meltdown. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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That was the scene at President Emmanuel Macron’s headquarters yesterday after French voters re-elected him. He beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for a second time. This election was a rematch of the 2017 presidential election, but it was still the strongest performance by the far-right since world war II. The FT’s Leila Abboud was at Le Pen’s headquarters last night. She joins me now. Hey, Leila.

Leila Abboud
Hello.

Marc Filippino
Leila, here’s what it sounded like at Le Pen’s headquarters.

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This is surprisingly upbeat, you know, what do you make of this?

Leila Abboud
Yeah, I mean, you have to understand that for the far-right movement that her father started few decades ago, this is progress, right? I mean, there, they used to be a party sort of relegated to the extreme, seen as like really outside the norms of political conversation here. And what she’s done since she took over the movement in the past decade or so is just make it into a real political party that has to be contended with in every presidential election. And being in the second round against Emmanuel Macron, to some degree, that’s a victory for her. And she said that in her concession speech.

Marc Filippino
This election, it really showed some deep divisions in French society and a lot of frustration among working class French. Do you see Macron adjusting the way he governs?

Leila Abboud
I mean, there are a lot of people hoping that he will, but we really don’t know the answer to that yet. There was some hints in his victory speech that he did recognise that some of the people who voted for him were voting for him to block Marine Le Pen and the far-right coming to power and weren’t necessarily super enthused by his programme. But I think, you know, a lot of the people who are feeling left out of France today, people who aren’t doing as well economically, who are, don’t identify with kind of the elite France that the France is doing well, that Macron really represents, bringing them back on board is gonna take more than some words. I think there’s gonna be a lot of expectations for him to govern differently. A lot of this is gonna depend on what happens in the legislative elections in June. If he is elected with another big majority, like last time, then he will have the luxury of ignoring everyone else and doing whatever he wants. But he may not be, and I think that’s what the opposition both on the far-right with Marine Le Pen and on the far-left are really gearing up to try and have a different dynamic in the parliament than what they had in the first term.

Marc Filippino
Do you have a sense yet of how financial markets and the business community might react to this?

Leila Abboud
Yeah, I think financial markets are gonna be relieved because the implications of a Marine Le Pen win would have been profoundly destabilising for sort of European unity and also just kind of the macro economy in Europe at a pretty difficult time when inflation is running relatively high. But it’s a bit of a sensitive moment for the European economy and the global economy. So I think had Marine Le Pen won, there would have been a serious market freak out. So we’re not gonna have that. And I’m sure that people in trading floors all over Europe and New York are gonna be pleased about that. I think the business community, if you talk about sort of the CEOs running the big companies here or even smaller companies, I don’t necessarily know that anybody is gonna be celebrating too much because France has some social unrest in the coming months when Macron starts to govern again. And one of the things he’s promised to do is a very unpopular retirement reform to raise the retirement age. The last time he tried to do this in 2019, there was like months and months of strikes and protests (laughs) that only ended when Covid started. So, you know, I think the business community here is a bit worried about that, both the social protests and the kind of difficult macro environment.

Marc Filippino
Leila Abboud is the FT’s Paris correspondent. Thanks, Leila.

Leila Abboud
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
Over the weekend, European lawmakers approved landmark legislation that will force tech giants like Google and Facebook to monitor online content more aggressively. This is the second of the European Union’s two-part approach to Big Tech, the first will go after unfair market dominance by tech giants. This newly approved legislation would protect internet users. Here’s the FT’s Javier Espinoza.

Javier Espinoza
So one of the major achievements of this new legislation is that it’ll force platforms like Twitter or Google or Facebook to tell regulators, what is it exactly that they are doing to tackle fake news or misinformation. So it will also allow regulators to know this and then they can tell the platforms we think that you should be doing more or less. Of course, a bureaucrat or an EU official in Brussels is not going to dictate how these platforms should police the internet, but they will have more of an oversight in the interest of internet users being more safe and, you know, getting more accurate information online.

Marc Filippino
Javier, were there any big concessions that lawmakers had to make here?

Javier Espinoza
One key point of contention was the issue of targeted advertising. There was a huge push here by politicians to try and ban this completely. Of course, Google and Facebook pushed back aggressively. They were arguing that, you know, like your local pizza place, they need to target you with advertising. And if you are going to completely ban this practise, you would also (sic) hurting local businesses. So we got to a compromise by which the new law say that you cannot target minors, or also that you cannot use sensitive information about your sexual preferences, your gender, your religion, religious beliefs to target you with online advertising.

Marc Filippino
Do you think this will have some ripple effects beyond the European Union?

Javier Espinoza
This is a really good point because we talk about these so-called Brussels effect so that the EU has this first-mover advantage. It is the first bloc in the world that is comprehensively doing this with a very clear digital agenda, as I was mentioning. And so I know, for example, that governments in Singapore, Chile, Canada and notably the United States are already trying to copy many of the key features of these two pieces of legislation so that we don’t arrive at a point where we have these fragmented internet, where you have, as a user, some rights in Brussels, but different rights in Washington.

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Marc Filippino
Sri Lanka is in the middle of a catastrophic economic crisis. The government can’t pay its debts. Foreign reserves have plummeted. There are fuel and food shortages. Protests have broken out on the streets and there is political upheaval. This weekend, the World Bank agreed to provide emergency funds for medicine and other critical items to Sri Lanka, and the IMF is working with officials on financing a way out of the crisis. Here’s the FT’s Ben Parkin with more.

Benjamin Parkin
Because Sri Lanka has so much debt, an institution like the IMF is going to be hesitant to loan more money without assurances that Sri Lanka will be taking steps in order to improve the sustainability of its debt, rather than just keep growing it and into further crises in the future. So they are expected to want to see some kind of restructuring on Sri Lanka’s debt. Sri Lanka has said that they’re gonna suspend bond payments to their private creditors, and a bond is due next in July. So unless they come to a deal before that, they’ll end up defaulting and even restructuring is arguably a form of default.

Marc Filippino
So in addition to the IMF, the UN Development Programme is also stepping in. It wants the Sri Lankan government to provide a temporary basic income for citizens as part of a financial deal. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Benjamin Parkin
It’s just one proposal, of course, and it may very well not happen. But the idea is you could for a certain limited period of time, say, six months, nine months, whatever it is, make sure that every working age Sri Lankan gets a certain amount of money per month or week in order to ensure that they can meet basic needs around fuel or food. So the idea is to create a temporary emergency social safety net given the severity of the crisis. Now, obviously, the concept of basic income is a really hotly debated one, and there are people who argue it works. People argue it doesn’t work. The UNDP is saying that as a temporary measure, it could be quite cost effective, and it could also ensure that people don’t fall through the safety net.

Marc Filippino
Ben Parkin is the FT’s South Asia correspondent.

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Before we go, the UK government has confirmed it will create an independent watchdog to oversee English football or soccer or whatever you wanna call it. The new regulator will have sweeping powers to block “unscrupulous” owners from buying teams. This move comes a year after an attempt to create an alternative league, the European Super League. It was, if you remember, wildly unpopular. The new watchdog will also allow for fan input. They’ll be able to weigh in on issues like team stadiums, crests and kits. Kits, by the way, for all you Americans out there, are the same as uniforms.

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You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

This transcript has been automatically generated. If by any chance there is an error please send the details for a correction to: typo@ft.com. We will do our best to make the amendment as soon as possible.