Macron under pressure from allies over crackdowns on migrants
Macron ran on a platform of pro-migrant. Now that he has to govern, he discovered that policy is unworkable.
French President Emmanuel Macron fired back Tuesday at criticism from his political allies over the way he has handled the country’s migrant issue — a controversy that has ballooned into the first real crisis of his young presidency.
Before his election in May, Macron campaigned on a platform of welcoming migrants, and many saw his victory as a repudiation of the anti-immigrant hard line of his opponent, Marine Le Pen. But after months of expulsions and police crackdowns targeting the migrant community, some of Macron’s powerful supporters — particularly on the left — are signaling that they feel betrayed.
“Mr. Macron, your politics contradict the humanism that you preach,” a group of his allies wrote in a scathing open letter published Tuesday in Le Monde. Among the signatories was Jean-Pisani Ferry, the president’s principal economic adviser during the campaign.
On Tuesday, Macron went on the defensive in the coastal city of Calais, the symbolic epicenter of France’s migrant troubles. Before an audience of local and national police officials, he dismissed his critics as urban intellectuals who lack respect for hard-working civil servants.