Dixmont, Yonne

Last summer, Emmanuel Macron lashed out at France’s constitution because it prevents him from running for a third consecutive term in office. It is, he told his entourage, a ‘disastrous stupidity’.

The majority of the French people would disagree. Macron’s approval ratings are dire, and a poll at the start of this month revealed that the youngest president in the history of the Fifth Republic has the support of only 7 per cent of the under-35s.

Should anyone be surprised? Immigration is out of control, farmers have marched on Paris and teachers are at the end of their tether because of classroom intimidation. Anti-Semitic acts have surged since Hamas attacked Israel in October and drug cartels are extending their reach into towns and cities. Violent crime is up and trust in the judiciary is down.

To cap it all, the country’s finances are a shambles. Last week the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies announced that France’s deficit has soared 22 per cent in a year, and is now 5.5 per cent of GDP. The economy was supposed to be Macron’s strong suit. As a veteran broadcaster quipped on French television: ‘Macron was presented as the “Mozart of Finance”, but he’s ended up composing the requiem.’

Macron hopes that his image of himself as a Eurozone Caesar will be strengthened by the Paris Olympics

Never lacking in confidence, however, Macron is repositioning himself not as merely leader of France but as Europe’s de facto commander-in-chief, capitalising on France’s standing as the only one of the 27 EU member states to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. It is also the only EU country with its own nuclear weapons.

Macron hopes that his image of himself as a Eurozone Caesar will be strengthened by the Olympics in Paris this summer. He has told his advisers that the Games will be ‘the climax of his mandate’ and place France ‘at the centre of the world’. Against the advice of his security chiefs, Macron has arranged for the opening ceremony to be held along the river Seine and not in the Olympic Stadium, as is traditional. But with that global attention come two serious risks.

The French intelligence services are particularly worried about the threat from Islamist terror groups. In the past few months Islamic State, Hamas and Al-Qaeda have all been linked with plots to attack Europe. Desperate to prevent a repeat of the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 of the Israeli team, France has asked many of its allies to send ‘several thousand’ members of their security forces to help guard the Games.

The other risk comes from Vladimir Putin and what Russia might do in Ukraine during the Olympics. Macron and Putin have been engaged in a war of words after the French President became the first Nato head of state to float the idea of deploying ground troops to Ukraine. When Macron was accused in some quarters of warmongering he retorted: ‘War is on European soil – there is less than 1,500km between Strasbourg and Lviv. Who can think for a second that President Putin, who hasn’t respected any of his limits or commitments, would stop there?’

Macron’s transformation from dove to hawk over Ukraine is a recent phenomenon. In part he made the shift as a response to his dire domestic record. No one has profited more from the slow death of Macron’s political project than Marine Le Pen, who has in the past praised Putin. Her National Rally party has opened up a 12-point lead over Macron’s Renaissance ahead of June’s European Elections.

Macron’s government has duly ramped up the anti-Russia rhetoric. Gabriel Attal, France’s new Prime Minister, outraged Le Pen and her 87 MPs in parliament by describing them as Putin’s fifth columnists. Valérie Hayer, who is leading Renaissance’s European election campaign and is Macron’s closest ally in Brussels, then compared Le Pen to Édouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938.

It is not the first time the spirit of appeasement has been invoked regarding France, Russia and Ukraine. In February 2022, 11 days before the invasion, Britain’s defence secretary Ben Wallace said there was a ‘whiff of Munich’ in the air. He didn’t name names, but everyone knew he was referring to Macron, who insisted on maintaining a channel of communication with Putin.

In a recent interview with Ukrainian television Macron said he would like a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia for the duration of the Olympics as a ‘message of peace’. Putin said he was open to the idea but only if Ukraine ‘really seriously want to build peaceful, neighbourly relations’.

Macron’s ceasefire idea seems at best fanciful. Why would Putin agree to it when Russia and Belarus have been barred from competing in Paris by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)? Their athletes will be allowed to participate as neutrals, provided they do not publicly state their support for the invasion of Ukraine, a stance that has the backing of Britain. However, some in France, including Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, doesn’t want any Russian athletes to compete, even as neutrals.

This is a humiliating snub in the eyes of Putin, and he wants revenge. Russia has announced that it will host an international multi-sport event of its own in September: the World Friendship Games. But there might be more serious retaliation to come. Kyiv envisages a massive Russian summer offensive, perhaps launched to coincide with the Olympics. Putin is known for timing his acts of aggression around the Games: he attacked Georgia a day before the Olympics in 2008; Ukraine during the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014 and then again in 2022 just days after the Winter Olympics finished in Beijing. Putin would take some pleasure in spoiling Macron’s great European moment.

Kyiv envisages a massive Russian summer offensive, perhaps launched to coincide with the Games

There is precedent, too, for the Olympics being cancelled because of war – although this seems almost impossible nowadays, given the huge commercial deals involved. The 1916 Olympics were scheduled for Berlin and preparations – including the construction of a 18,000-seat stadium – were well under way when the Great War erupted in August 1914. Newspapers were soon speculating on the fate of the Games, but not until March 1915 were they officially cancelled.

When it came to the 1940 Olympics, Tokyo was meant to host, but Japan withdrew in July 1938 because of its war with China. The IOC named Helsinki – the city that finished second to Tokyo in the initial bidding – as the replacement. When the second world war began in September 1939 the feasibility of the Olympics was once more a topic of media conjecture. The USA volunteered to step in but on September 21 Finland’s Olympic Committee told the Americans they were ‘mistaken’ if they thought they could not honour their commitment. ‘Arrangements and buildings have almost been brought to completion,’ they said in a statement. What the Finns hadn’t anticipated was an invasion by Russia. The attack began on the last day of November 1939 and what was known as the ‘Winter War’ was concluded by the Moscow Peace Treaty the following March. In April, the Games were cancelled.

Eighty-four years later, another bloody war is being fought on European soil. To date, no one has suggested that the Paris Olympics should be cancelled. It would be the last thing Macron wants. But as Putin has repeatedly proved, he is no respecter of the Olympic flame.