Lionel Laurent, Columnist

Emmanuel Macron Is Losing His Urban Grip

France’s cities aspire to more radical green policies, and that’s hard to square with voters from the rest of the country.

June 29, 2020 at 6:16 AM UTC

By Lionel Laurent

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.

Local losses. — Local losses.
Photographer: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP

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There were two obvious losers in France’s runoff round of local elections, held this weekend after a three-month delay caused by the Covid-19 epidemic. One was democracy. Only about 40% of eligible voters bothered to turn up, a record low. The other was President Emmanuel Macron, whose core urban fan base went Green.

The eco-friendly EELV party snatched control of several big cities, from Lyon to Bordeaux, while Paris remained in the hands of its car-bashing Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo. Macron’s party, La Republique En Marche!, flopped. It wasn’t so much a green wave as a green “tsunami.”