Narcissus, King of the World – or Emmanuel Macron’s Frustrated Ambitions

June is lovely on the French Riviera. And on this Pentecost weekend—before a particularly packed travel schedule in the following weeks, including the G7 in Canada, a trip to Greenland, and a UN summit in New York on Palestine—Emmanuel Macron couldn’t resist a detour to Monaco with his wife for a state visit... 41 years after François Mitterrand, one of his distant predecessors.

Between Trump and his tariffs, Putin and his war in Ukraine, Netanyahu and his war in Gaza, not to mention the looming conflict between Israel and Iran—and the deteriorating situation back in France—it was clear that the French president had nothing more pressing than to review a unit of ceremonial Monégasque guards, decked out in red and white, before meeting with the local “Prince,” who, for his part, is suspected of tolerating money laundering and terrorist financing on the Rock.

And since the weather was perfect, the president arrived two days later, on Sunday, June 8, in full presidential splendor aboard the Thalassa—the flagship of French oceanography—to preside over the UN’s Ocean Summit in Nice. A rather original way, to say the least, of commemorating the one-year anniversary of his fateful decision to dissolve the National Assembly.

The country is paralyzed, its finances in shambles, the government reduced to a ghost-like presence, commenting on events it no longer controls. But no matter! This detached president carries on as if everything were normal—even using the Nice summit to rebuke his own Prime Minister for letting his environmental reforms unravel, and implicitly accusing his Interior Minister of “brainwashing” the French public with trivial “news stories,” even as violence linked to uncontrolled immigration is surging across the country...

Still in Nice, Macron demanded that Israel release the French nationals intercepted aboard a yacht en route to Gaza—a firmness that contrasted sharply with the French government’s near-silence over other citizens held in Iranian or Algerian prisons.

But Macron had just toughened his tone on Gaza and was preparing, ten days later in New York, to recognize the State of Palestine alongside the Saudi crown prince—his own way of marking June 18.

The problem is that History suddenly sped up, without informing our modern-day Jupiter.

It was through the press that Macron discovered, on the morning of Friday the 13th, the Israeli strike from the night before on Iran’s nuclear sites. While Netanyahu had made sure to warn Trump—who promptly pulled some U.S. diplomatic and military staff out of the region—Macron, like his European peers, had been deliberately left in the dark. A telling sign of Europe’s—and France’s—waning influence in the Middle East.

Forced to cancel the Palestine summit, Macron nonetheless found the right words: recognizing “Israel’s right—like any people’s—to live free from the fear of annihilation,” and rightly pointing out “the existential threat that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose to the security of us all.”

Still, enormous questions remain: how, in the short term, can we prevent further Iranian terrorist attacks in France—as happened in the 1980s? How can we build an effective air defense system in France and Europe against the missiles and drones that will inevitably threaten our soil? How can we protect a population that is, today, completely vulnerable? And until then, should France help Israel shoot down Iranian drones?

As for Macron, he resumed his presidential travels. After his weekend in Monaco, the following Sunday—June 15—was spent in Greenland. “It’s not for sale,” Macron declared. His foreign minister, the ever-bizarre Jean-Noël Barrot, had already set the stage back in January by floating the surreal idea of sending French troops there... to counter American ambitions. Unreal.

Pierre Lellouche – June 15, 2025