A few weeks after President Emmanuel Macron called for the SNAP election last summer, it brought a deeply divided French parliament, so if his name came out, it was often to call for his resignation.
The unpopular president has long describing critics as lonely, all dominant and rog-harmed, and has had a cast of prime ministers, as a lame duck on a volatile government of his own creations, rarely showing it.
But President Trump changed that. American leaders suddenly reversed their 80-year friendly policy on Europe, retracted their support for Ukraine, retracted their siding with Russia, and European leaders panicked and lost. In doing so, he created this Macron moment.
The French president, once seemed to have disappeared, is now headlined every day. Macron repeatedly gathered European leaders in Paris, rushed to Washington to London, and became the focus of Europe's struggling efforts to stand at his feet in general.
After years of warning about NATO's “immediate brain death,” Macron's warning appears to be foresighted as Trump threatens to turn his back on the alliance.
Macron's story about European boots on earth to maintain peace in Ukraine is a plan that has been rejected as impossible by incredible allies and is a plan that works as a plausible way to prevent fighting.
Similarly, Macron's vision of Europe, with “strategic autonomy” from the US, was once dismissed as an idea that is far from people who are easier to clean than to follow. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he placed more emphasis on the “Pillars of Europe” within NATO. However, other European leaders seem ready to follow him towards the goal of allowing Europeans to better protect themselves.
“The crisis is a very good thing for the president,” said Vincent Martinny, professor of political science at Cote da Azur University.
He further said, “Macron is the only person who can become a leader.”
Germany's next prime minister, Friedrich Merz, has yet to form a government. The crisis has brought British Prime Minister Kiel closer to the European Union, but his country is no longer a member of the EU. And it is not clear that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's efforts to mediate tensions with European allies are particularly interested in Trump.
So Macron stepped into the vacuum of leadership.
After Vice President JD Vance, the French president and his office took action, denounced European leaders in a speech at the Munich Security Conference last month, showing fundamental changes in the US president's foreign alliance.
Macron called for the first meeting of European leaders in Paris shortly after the meeting ended, and the next day he called for a second European leader. He was the first European leader to go to Washington to talk directly with Trump, and explained it to his fellow European Union colleagues at a subsequent meeting.
A few days after a disastrous visit to the White House by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, both Macron and Stage led their allies on how to fix the situation.
French diplomats close to Macron say that on average, French presidents talk to Trump and Zelensky and Starge more regularly every two days.
The path to advance in Europe appears to follow many of the courses Macron has pointed to over the years.
Recently, plans that European troops once sought for distance to enforce peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine have begun to take a stronger form. The UK and France have already committed troops, and Danish Foreign Minister Lars Rocke Rasmussen said on Monday that his country is ready to take part too.
On Tuesday, Macron welcomed military leaders from around 30 countries who gathered in Paris for defense and security conferences to seek further commitment.
One of Macron's most audacious gestures was to hold discussions with European leaders about sharing French nuclear weapon protections with them. In addition to Russia, France and the UK are the only two countries in Europe with nuclear weapons.
The proposal spoke about the leadership position Macron hopes for France. France has long been proud of the independence of nuclear weapons.
But it also reflects new distrust of America's commitment to European allies and Macron's belief that Russian invasion will expand even further if Russia's aggression is not checked without nuclear protection promises.
“We are entering a new era,” he said in a speech aired last week at the top of the French news. “Peace is no longer guaranteed on our continent.”
He added, “I want to believe that the US will stay on our side, but if that doesn't happen, we have to be ready.”
However, it is not certain that any of Macron's desperate actions will prove successful. Ukraine said it was open to a ceasefire with Russia, and Moscow responded on Thursday, saying it was open too, but more discussion was needed.
Trump's own position is mercury, both suffocating Europe to spend its own defense, threatening wine and alcohol on Thursday with 200% tariffs.
Macron's estimate of European leadership has sometimes irritated some of his allies. To report on his fellow European leaders about his trip to Washington, Italian Meloni challenged Macron with the abilities he went to the White House.
Italian defense minister Guido Clossett accused Macron of providing European troops to Ukraine without the “conscience” to consult with other EU countries.
“You don't send troops that send faxes,” Crossett, whose government opposes the deployment of troops in Ukraine, wrote on X, a social media platform.
Then there is all the practical questions about how Macron will fund such an increase in spending while France faces a budget crisis.
He prepared his country for the threat of war and announced an increase in military spending over the next five years – without additional taxes, he promised, and promised to expand arms production. After the US, France is the second largest arms exporter in the world.
Other European countries have also announced that proposals from the Commission, including loan programs to pay more arms and technology, could potentially be supported by proposals from the Commission.
But the bigger existential crisis has overturned all the detailed practicalities for now. In France, recent polls show that the president's approval rate has risen from four to seven points. According to a monthly barometer by the French Institute of Public Opinion, it is the biggest jump since the arrival of Covid in the 2020s.
The French public agrees with him mostly. Europe must continue to support Ukraine, invest more in its own defense against potential Russian threats, and the US is no longer considered a trustworthy ally.
Even many of the president's political opponents praised his diplomatic efforts and agreed to his analysis.
“I'm not a macronist, but he was pretty good. The important thing is to unite people and convince them that the situation is pretty serious and clearly requires national mobilization,” said Cedric Perrin, a French Republican senator who presides over the French Senator's Foreign Affairs and Military Committee.
It appears that he has reached what Macron had said shortly after he was first elected in 2017, not the man he met at that moment.
Andrezi Bavis, a Czech politician who became the country's prime minister several months later, offered to slap him, saying, “He should really concentrate on France.”
Today, much of Europe admits that Macron was always right.
“In the Czech Republic, we are very grateful for the French President's leadership,” said Jaroslav Kruhrust, Czech ambassador to France. “Emmanuel Macron has gained a lot of credibility in some of us in the world.”
The report was provided by Emma Bubola of Rome and Aurelien Breeden of Paris.
