Emmanuel Macron, tireless creator of institutions

New school year, new conclave. And new presidential performance. Last Wednesday in Saint-Denis, Emmanuel Macron brought together the party leaders. The meeting lasted twelve hours and ended in the middle of the night. Tireless president, as at the time of the "great debate" which had put him back in the saddle after the crisis of "yellow vests".

The Élysée boasted "a great political moment", unprecedented under the Fifth Republic. But the opponents are skeptical. If "the approach with the political parties is not uninteresting, the problem is what will come out of it. I hope that it will not have the same result as the great debate, the Citizens' Climate Convention or the National Council for Refoundation. Be careful that once again, this leads to nothing", warns the President (LR) of the Senate, Gérard Larcher.

It has been a trademark since 2017: if the president has never used major constitutional weapons, the referendum or the dissolution, he has on the other hand multiplied the innovations. "All the springs of political and institutional communication have been used", which "goes with its desire to get out of the codes and joins its way of governing", notes the constitutionalist Anne-Charlène Bezzina.

Way to circumvent the Parliament, according to the detractors of the president. Obsession with better involving citizens in public decision-making, argue its supporters. "All these attempts" aim to ensure that "grassroots people, who have different political identities, can recognize themselves in the relationship with power", according to the president of the MoDem, François Bayrou.

First innovation: the "great national debate" of 2019. Seriously shaken by the "yellow vests", Emmanuel Macron had embarked on a series of exchanges, sometimes lasting up to seven hours, with assemblies mainly composed of mayors. The opportunity to demonstrate his pugnacity and his ability to respond on many subjects, even local ones.

But "the notebooks of grievances in all the town halls, where hundreds of thousands of French people have come to fill them out, have languished in the basements of the prefectures without any follow-up being given", denounces the head of Marine Ecologists Clipper.

"Counter fatality"

Second novelty: citizens' conventions. French people drawn by lot, responsible for working on a subject and establishing proposals. For the Climate Convention, the president had undertaken to take them up "without filter". But as soon as his conclusions were returned in mid-2020, Mr. Macron had immediately asked "three jokers", while opening the door to a referendum which never succeeded.

The same method is at work today on the delicate subject of the end of life. The "conventionals" have come out in favor of active assistance in dying. Case to follow.

Re-elected in 2022, Emmanuel Macron announced a few days before the legislative elections the creation of a National Council for Refoundation. With its title evoking the CNR of the Resistance, the body wanted to be at the heart of the development of the major reforms of the second five-year term. But the loss of the absolute majority in the Assembly, then the boycott of many political and union leaders emptied the project of its initial ambition.

Thursday, the "plenary" CNR - many "thematic" CNRs have been organized on education, housing, health - could move "towards a generalization of territorial approaches", according to a connoisseur of the file.

"The problem is always the same, there is no majority, but impossible to admit otherwise it is the end of the reign". The president therefore strives to "give perspective" to "counter fatality", analyzes political scientist Benjamin Morel.

But for Mrs. Bezzina, these tools "simply avoid the + yes + and the + no +. You have no other choice but to follow the result of a referendum. While all these kinds of para-constitutional innovations do not not commit. It is not a decision-making process, but a consultative one".