France’s Macron celebrates 2024 Olympics amid political crisis

PARIS –

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged Tuesday in his New Year’s address to the nation that his decision to dissolve parliament, casting France into a political crisis, backfired.

“I must recognize tonight that the dissolution has, for the moment, brought more division in the (National) Assembly than solutions for the French,” he said, adding that “I take my full part for that.”

It was as close as the French leader has come to apologizing for his decision in June that triggered early legislative elections. They produced a hung parliament, with the National Assembly roughly split among three sharply opposed main blocks — none with a majority to govern alone.

Macron has since had to rotate through three prime ministers — with Gabriel Attal followed by Michel Barnier followed by the current premier, François Bayrou — in an effort to find a consensus-builder who might be able to bridge parliamentary divisions, pass a 2025 budget and stave off the risk of another governmental collapse.

Macron expressed hope that lawmakers will form ad hoc majorities to pass legislation and said “our government should be able to follow a path of compromise to get things done.”

His address started on a lighter note — casting back to the Olympic Games and Paralympics in Paris that temporarily shifted the focus from France’s political woes.

“Together this year, we proved that impossible isn’t French,” Macron said, voicing over video highlights from the Games. They “showed a France full of audacity and panache, crazily free,” he said.

Macron also celebrated the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, splendidly rebuilt from the catastrophic fire that brought down its spire and turned its roof into ashes in 2019. He called the rebuilt monument “the symbol of our French will.”

Some of the revelers who flocked to Paris’ Champs-Elysées boulevard for a music, video and fireworks show ushering in 2025 said they hope for a brighter outlook for France.

“It’s been complicated: parliament being dissolved, the somewhat chaotic state of things and the current climate with the war in Ukraine and everything that’s happening in the world. It’s a bit anxiety-inducing,” said Xavier Lepouze, who traveled with his wife, Angelique, from the Normandy region west of Paris.

“We’d love to have peace, calm,” she said. “To see joy and happiness in people’s minds and on their faces, because you can feel that everyone is morose on a daily basis, so there’s a real need for positivity.”