Ten months after the facts, the political earthquake was still a topic of conversation, even during the Paris Book Fair at the Grand Palais. In front of a bookstall, amid the hubbub, former culture minister Françoise Nyssen, accompanying President Emmanuel Macron on his visit, suddenly confided: “Thank you for the dissolution,” she whispered to him, referring to his decision to dissolve the Asseblée Nationale and trigger snap parliamentary elections, the night his side was beaten in the European elections of June 9. “I was really proud of you. What’s more, it was June 9, my birthday.” Briefly taken aback, Macron replied: “I will be forgiven with time.”
“It wasn’t a bad decision,” approved a woman listening in. “No, because people have to be made to take their responsibilities,” Macron said, glancing at the journalist’s boom mic recording the conversation. “Otherwise, things fall apart from the inside. I’ve seen it happen before.”
Was Macron sincere? During his televised New Year’s address on December 31, 2024, when France was entering 2025 without a budget after the first post-dissolution government, led by Michel Barnier, had been toppled, the president publicly admitted for the first time that the move had, “for now, brought more divisions to the Assemblée than solutions for the French people.” He added: “Clarity and humility require us to recognize that, for the moment, the decision has produced more instability than calm, and for that, I take full responsibility.”
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