For the European press, the Benalla affair undermines the image of Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron is expected in Madrid on Thursday, July 26 for a working visit with the new President of the Spanish Government , the socialist Pedro Sanchez. If it gives him the opportunity to get away from Paris, the trip should take place in the shadow of the Benalla affair, which does not go unnoticed in Spain, as in the other neighboring countries of France. [19659005] For a week now, Spanish, German, British and Belgian newspapers have followed the revelations closely, without making their headlines. They agree, however, on the seriousness of the scandal. The Guardian in the United Kingdom and Die Welt the German conservative daily, thus speak "of the biggest scandal since the beginning of the mandate" Emmanuel Macron.

Understand why
        
    
          the Benalla affair becomes a state affair
          

In a country "macronphile" like Spain, the scandal may therefore taint the arrival of the French president even as Pedro Sanchez hoped to reaffirm its international stature by posing with the side of Macron. It is the "worst crisis of his government" according to the Spanish daily El Pais . For the right-wing daily El Mundo, the Benalla case "reveals at least one dysfunction: an all-powerful president believed he had the right to grant extraordinary prerogatives to his bodyguard. trust, and perhaps, to be seen, allowed a presidential police to operate far from legal controls. "

According to the newspaper, Mr. Macron is in his " worst moment of popularity " " the name of Alexander Benalla will forever weigh on his mandate ". For its part, the conservative and monarchical newspaper ABC believes that "Emmanuel Macron's" gorilla "scandal has turned into a political minefield that threatens all the reform projects of the country. president, turned into a rosary of pans that can pursue it indefinitely. "

The relativized German press

In Germany, the Benalla affair has been widely reported in the media since Thursday, July 19, the day after the first revelations of the World. If the articles are content to tell the facts, one of them, published in Spiegel Saturday, July 21, stands out: "Benalla wears a beard and has North African origins. For that, some of those who criticize him believe that he looks more like a terrorist than a police officer.

However, some articles go further in terms of analysis, and consider that this case is revealing of the report to the power of the French president. This is the case in the Tagesspiegel in an article entitled "The dangerous arrogance of Macron." "The head of state retreats into silence. With this attitude, he reinforces his critics who accuse him of behaving like a hyper-president without regard for the parliament and the media ", writes the Berlin daily.

Read our analysis on
        
    
          loopholes in the chain of command
          

"Before his election, Macron published a book entitled Revolution, recalls the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich-based center-left daily. Politics is too often lacking in transparency, the candidate thought, promising to govern selflessly and honestly. Such a candidate, one could imagine, was going to be a president capable of supporting criticism. We have the opposite feeling. Macron is silent.

Despite these criticisms, the German press which, since the beginning of the five-year period, has been generally very appreciative of Mr. Macron, refuses to switch from one extreme to the other, and even if the image of the French president is seriously damaged, the sentence is not total. "If you put all the details end to end, the case appears less serious than other scandals that tainted the V ^e Republic – for example that of Rainbow Warrior, this boat of Greenpeace sunk by the French secret services in 1985 " thus relativizes the Tagesspiegel .

Read how,
        
    
          after days of silence, Macron organizes the riposte
          

The British Press Irony

A president with the depreciated image, it is also what appears in the British press. If the case does not make the headlines either, the few analyzes focus on the story and the president, while Emmanuel Macron is "came to power in May 2017 pleading for a cleansing of French politics and the "moralization" of public life " as recalled by the daily newspaper The Guardian . A case "which does not help" in the image of the president, "quickly passed from that of a flexible libero-centrist to that of an inflexible reactionary" to believe the generalist daily The Independent

For the BBC the case Benalla is even revealing the weaknesses of a president now "clay feet" :

"That such a small event becomes a state affair suggests one of these two things. Either the opposition and the media lack so much critical elements about the president that they happily pushed the "Benalla affair" to its limits, at the risk of exaggerating. Either the event itself reveals a darker truth about the Macron presidency, which has so far been too dazzling for us to notice.

And The Guardian to recall that, despite the "exemplary integrity of his team at the Elysee" touted by Emmanuel Macron at the G7 summit in Quebec the 8th and June 9, his presidency fits in the history of the presidents of the V ^e Republic which is not an example. Enumerating scandals – from Bokassa diamonds for Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to suspicions of Libyan financing of the campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, through the "black cabinet" François Mitterrand – the newspaper suggests that Emmanuel Macron "should have known that his cleaning crusade would end up falling on a bone"

The Daily Telegraph daily conservative, finally suggests a double blow for the head of the French State , whose popularity "reached record low after the publication of images" instead of "bond" that it should have known after the French victory at the World Cup of football, July 15.

The questions
        
    
          Emmanuel Macron's speech on the Benalla affair
          

The Belgian press delays

If they have a little shunned their French neighbors after the World Cup football, the Belgians are gradually regaining their curiosity for the hexagonal policy with the Benalla affair. The dailies follow the case closely, especially since the beginning of the hearings before the National Assembly. Overall, the editorialists agree on two points: they also criticize the silence observed by the head of state until July 24, and applaud the thirst for democracy of the French people.

" France, Europe need an enlightened Macron, not an entrenched Jupiter ", wrote the newspaper La Libre Belgique . " In the Benalla case, it was first the press, then the justice system and the French Parliament, which forced the executive to enforce the laws and to respect the ethical and accountability requirements […]. This is the only thing pleasing to note ", for its part said Monday the editorialist Beatrice Delvaux newspaper Le Soir . She explains to World that the French-language press " follows the affair, but not in a hysterical way either ."

In general, Francophones are very attentive to the politics French, if only because they watch a lot of television channels in the Hexagon and because Belgian politics, with all its power levels, is sometimes less readable. This interest is also explained, according to Beatrice Delvaux, by the image " Glamor politically and personally ", which Emmanuel Macron returns. This is not always the case for Belgian decision-makers

On the Flemish press front (Flanders, in the north of the country), coverage is more limited. "But if it becomes more serious, we will write", ensures Lieve Dierckx, journalist for De Tijd .