The purpose of French President Emmanuel Macron’s to the US last month was explicit: salvaging the Iran nuclear deal and convincing President Donald Trump not to reimpose sanctions. On January 12, the Trump administration extended sanction relief for Iran by four months. Pressure is now on for US Congress and Europe to address what the president has called “disastrous flaws” in the deal that was agreed in 2015.

In the run-up to Macron’s visit, President Trump signaled his willingness to consider a . The American liberal press welcomed Macron’s visit and his attempt to influence Trump’s foreign policy. Days after the meeting, however, Macron and his team seem less than ever that the US will stick to the agreement.

Record-low approval ratings and a series of labor strikes have hit Macron’s government. On the international stage, by contrast, Macron has achieved a series of diplomatic victories since taking office. His speech on climate change (“Make the planet great again”) has established him as a central voice in European liberalism. Under Macron, France has stepped up its commitment in the Sahel and taken the lead in creating the G5, a military force tasked with pushing back Islamist movements in the Sahara.

In his dealings with Trump, Macron has managed to be critical of the American administration without alienating his American counterpart. That Macron and Trump have a seemingly cordial relationship seems surprising given their political differences and Trump’s admiration for autocratic leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Yet Macron is the to be hosted at the White House for an official state visit. Macron’s encounters with Trump stand in sharp contrast with the American president’s cold interactions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister Theresa May.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Macron claimed he is always “” with the American president. Despite their political differences, both Trump and Macron have built their political success by differentiating themselves from their predecessors. Trump has put his efforts into undoing . Macron has condemned former President François Hollande’s inaction in Syria during the 2013 chemical attacks and has been equally critical of Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the Libyan crisis during his presidency.

The Limits of the “Special Relationship”

Despite his activism on the international stage, Macron’s ability to sway Trump is open to question. Prior to his visit, Macron suggested he had convinced Trump to maintain American military presence in Syria — a denied by the White House. On the question of the Iran nuclear deal, Macron has also failed to change the president’s mind.

After hours of intensive talks with the French president, Trump the nuclear agreement as “insane” and “ridiculous.” Recent days have seen a growing momentum against the agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example,  Iran to be “brazenly lying” about its nuclear ambitions.

At the same time, Macron’s negotiation tactics with Trump are likely to put him at odds with his European counterparts. The members of the agreement have opposed a hypothetical “new nuclear deal” briefly taunted by Trump and have been adamant that it should be preserved as it is. Not only did Macron’s political gamble not yield results, it has also drawn criticisms that he is compromising too much with the American administration. After his three-day visit, Macron was forced to that Trump is likely to “get rid of the deal on his own, for domestic reasons.”

Iran is not the only illustration of the limits of Macron’s diplomacy. Macron’s involvement in the Libyan conflict has shown the difficulty of balancing diverging interests in countries affected by political conflict and instability. Months after Macron between the Western-backed Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj and General Khalifa Haftar, political progress in Libya has stalled with no end to political instability in sight.

A Political Victory?

Because Macron’s negotiation with Trump has failed to achieve its goals, the trip didn’t score any political victories. Nonetheless, Macron’s diplomatic venture confirmed his ambition to fill the leadership vacuum in Europe at a time when Angela Merkel’s coalition faces difficulties in Germany and the UK grapples with the ramifications of Brexit.

Macron’s government has placed effective communication at the heart of France’s international policy. Macron’s speech on climate change made him an international celebrity, while his reception for Donald Trump and his wife Melania on Bastille Day last year was as a political success by the press. During his recent visit, Macron gave a speech before Congress in English, reiterating his support for the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. While less viral than his climate change speech, Macron’s address to Congress still fulfilled a similar purpose: strengthening his international aura.

Diplomacy is one of Macron’s strengths. The French president may be facing strikes and discontent at home, but his hyperactivity abroad has earned him political points in France. While 6 out of 10 French voters disapprove of Macron’s domestic record, 63% believe that his election has had a positive impact on France’s image, according to a recent .

Following his election to the French presidency, Macron faced . Almost a year after taking office, he has managed to shake off his image as a newcomer on the international stage. Whether his activism will achieve substantial results and the “special relationship” with Trump will stand the test of time remains to be seen.

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Former banker and Economy Minister Emmanuel in the second round of the 2017 French presidential elections on May 7. Unknown two years ago and never elected to public office before, the founder of the independent movement En Marche! (On the Move!), which he described as “neither right nor left,” became the youngest president in the history of the French Republic. Macron’s pro-business and pro-European platform clashed with Le Pen’s anti-globalization message throughout his campaign.

Sweeping 66% of the vote, Macron has temporarily pushed back the tide of populism in France. While his victory is giving hope to European and French liberals, Macron’s status as a political novice with no established party and a former adviser to the unpopular incumbent president François Hollande highlights his difficulties in the forthcoming parliamentary elections in June. Securing a parliamentary majority will be instrumental for Macron’s ability to deliver his agenda of economic modernization. The 2017 elections have rewarded outsiders and remapped French politics by dealing a blow to traditional parties. Without a party apparatus Macron will nonetheless struggle to form a workable majority.

The election campaign was marked by regular parallels between the Macron and Le Pen runoff and Jacques Chirac’s victory against Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. Yet Macron is operating in a radically different political context. While Chirac pulled 82.2% of the vote in 2002 over Le Pen’s 17.79%, Marine Le Pen considerably increased the National Front’s margin in 2017 (33%). In the aftermath of Macron’s victory, Le Pen hailed her party’s results and claimed that the National Front had become the

In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s qualification for the second round of the election sent shockwaves throughout the country. For the past 15 years, the National Front has become a stable feature of French politics and progressively managed to bring its core election themes (immigration and security) to the center of French political debate.

During the 2002 runoff with Le Pen, Chirac explicitly stated that he would not consider every vote in his name as an expression of support — an attitude that Macron has not replicated in this election. Effectively, Macron only secured 24% of the vote in the first round, while some polls indicated that more than chose him by default as the best adversary against Le Pen, who was certain to reach the final stage. The fact that , its highest level since 1969 for a presidential second round, is a clear sign of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with the alternatives on offer. In addition, 11% of those who voted cast a blank ballot, thus explicitly rejecting both candidates and the voting process.

The Rise of the Outsider

Macron’s victory was facilitated by the collapse of traditional parties, the conservative Les Républicains and the left-leaning Socialist Party. The two parties that have structured French political life for the past 50 years were eliminated in the first round of voting. While the Socialist Party’s campaign was torpedoed by President Hollande’s historically low popularity, the Republicans’ campaign was undermined by allegations that its candidate François Fillon had paid his family close to €1 million worth of taxpayers’ money in fake parliamentary jobs.

Despite being a former adviser to François Hollande, Macron managed to cast himself as an outsider to France’s mainstream politics by leaving the Socialist Party in 2016 and creating his own political movement. After their defeat, the Socialists and Republicans were nonetheless quick to announce that they will campaign on their own in the parliamentary elections and will seek to reinvent themselves.

Fillon, who is widely seen as the architect of the Republicans’ defeat in the , and several young candidates with presidential ambitions have emerged as potential party leaders. The Socialist Party is arguably in disarray and could provide a pool of support to Macron, although a number of Socialist parliamentarians have refused to do so.

Forming a Parliamentary Majority

France will hold parliamentary elections on 11 and 18 June, in which the new president will be seeking to form a working parliamentary majority in the lower house of parliament, the Assemblée Nationale. The parliamentary elections will show whether Macron’s movement can morph into a fully-fledged political party. With no representatives in parliament, no local branches and a party apparatus that does not match its political opponents’, Macron’s movement will be leading an improvised and hasty campaign. In the same time, traditional parties will benefit from their campaigning experience and are likely to win most seats. Macron will have to seek support from parliamentarians on both sides of the political spectrum and appeal to the center-right and the center-left to form a coalition of moderate Republicans and Socialists. How reliable such a makeshift majority will be during Macron’s five-year presidency remains uncertain.

After the announcement of his victory, a number of senior French politicians from the right and the left indicated that they would not be associated with a centrist government. Macron’s political honeymoon may be brief.

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For the past two weeks, France’s dramatic election campaign has been shaken by the surge in the polls of left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The election, which until recently had looked like a runoff between the National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the centrist Emmanuel Macron or the conservative François Fillon, has turned into an uncertain four-man contest.

A poll published on April 10 by has placed Mélenchon at 18% in the first round, ahead of the initial favorite Fillon, whose campaign has been marred by allegations that he paid his wife and children close to €1 million in fake parliamentary jobs. Four candidates now have a serious chance of qualifying for the second round. Less than a week before the French go to the polls, the outcome of the vote looks more unpredictable than in any election in over 50 years amid indications that close to are still undecided.

A Hard-Left Firebrand

A hard-left firebrand known for his distrust of the media and abrasive style, Mélenchon left the Socialist Party in 2008 to create his own political movement, Le Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left), and ran for office for the first time in 2012. That the candidate has gone from political agitator to serious contender five years later is a clear sign that the national mood is shifting. Both right and left populist candidates have emerged as the strong voices in the French election campaign, tapping into the electorate’s distrust of elites and the political old guard.

The socialist primaries in January gave a foretaste of the country’s desire for change, when the left-leaning Benoit Hamon defeated Prime Minister Emmanuel Valls, whose candidacy was too closely associated with the unpopular government of President François Hollande. The anti-system rhetoric embraced by the front-runners (Fillon aside) is playing in Mélenchon’s favor. While Le Pen has declared herself an enemy of “the establishment,” the leftist candidate is appealing to the country’s angry and disillusioned (the “Unbent France,” as his campaign slogan proclaims) and has an established track record as an outsider to France’s main political parties.

Mélenchon’s well-structured campaign has been aided by the complete overhaul of his communication strategy. From the use of holograms in rallies to the launch of a video game allowing players to wrestle down Wall Street bankers, the candidate’s young communications team has infused a new dynamic to his campaign.

A seasoned orator who quotes French historical figures and poetry in his rallies, Mélenchon has also outperformed his rivals in the two televised debates in the run-up to the vote.

While the candidate has modernized his campaign, he could also appear, perhaps paradoxically, as a more reassuring option to voters than five years ago. In 2012, Mélenchon vowed to be “the sound and the fury” of the presidential campaign; his campaign rallies drew large crowds wearing bonnets rouges — red Phrygian-style caps associated with the popular uprising of the French Revolution.

Five years later, Mélenchon has toned down the symbolism without changing the substance of his program, which includes 90% taxation on high earnings and the renegotiation of European Union treaties. Calls to civil insurrections have, however, been replaced by the more consensus-building theme of resistance and international solidarity, while the red background on the candidate’s 2012 campaign posters has given way to a more neutral blue, reminiscent of former socialist President François Mitterand’s 1981 reassuring campaign slogan “La Force Tranquille” (The Quiet Force). Mélenchon has jettisoned some of the most controversial aspects of his political persona in an attempt to reassure and inspire confidence.

Second-Round Wildcard?

With polls suggesting that the election will be a close call, Mélenchon’s qualification for the second round has become a plausible scenario. The Le Figaro poll has put Le Pen and Macron at 24%, Mélenchon at 18% (up from 10% in March), Fillon at 17% and the socialist Hamon at 10%. Voter loyalties have shifted throughout the campaign as a result of political scandals, distrust of traditional parties and skepticism about pollsters’ predictions. The conservative primaries already defied predictions with the victory of Fillon against conservative veteran Alain Juppé.

Mélenchon’s camp looks emboldened in the last days of the campaign as Fillon, Le Pen and Macron’s voting bases appeared to have reached their ceiling. Fillon implicitly acknowledged his weakened position by on April 9: “I’m not asking you to love me. I’m asking you to support me because it is in France’s interest.”

Macron’s campaign has gained momentum in the past few weeks, but his lack of experience in TV debates has been reflected in his stagnation in the polls. Although Le Pen is still expected to win the first round, her recent involvement in controversy about France’s complicity with the Holocaust is a sign that her campaign is losing steam.

Several obstacles nonetheless remain for Mélenchon. There are striking parallels between his recent trajectory and his 2012 campaign. A few days before the vote in 2012, polls predicted that Mélenchon would win 16% of the votes, but he could only pull 11.5% on the day. Then, his vote was depressed due to the division of the French left between its radical and moderate strands.

In 2017, the context has changed. The Socialist Party is facing an unprecedented crisis after Hollande’s presidency. Mélenchon — the only serious leftist candidate — is popular, but he has not fully shaken off his past reputation. His anti-EU and anti-globalization rhetoric has alienated part of the French left and could encourage some voters to defect to Macron.

As the eve of the election draws close, Mélenchon is still struggling to shake off his image as the enfant terrible of French politics.

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