French presidential candidate skipped electoral politics, instead connecting with the elite and acquiring market experience; at stake, the future of Europe
Mr. Macron made friends in high places who propelled him to ever-higher echelons of French society. Along the way he acquired a repertoire of skills, from piano and philosophy to acting and finance, that helped impress future mentors.
.. Rather than run for office in his hometown, gradually building a constituency, he proceeded straight to Paris, where he became an expert on banking and European technocracy. He acquired a mastery of arcane regulations, from the 3,334-page French national labor code to the plumbing of the European Union’s single market.. A Macron win would put Europe’s second-largest economy under an outspoken EU supporter who wants to establish a command center for the Continent’s defense, create a border police force, loosen France’s rigid labor rules, cut payroll taxes and reduce French public-sector employment by 120,000... Mr. Macron met his future wife, Brigitte Trogneux, while he was in high school and she was his drama coach. She was more than 20 years his senior, a member of a prominent business family of chocolatiers, and married... Mr. Hollande hired Mr. Macron as an aide, dispatching him to reassure investors and business leaders nervous about the candidate’s plan for a 75% tax on incomes above €1 million.After winning the presidency in 2012, Mr. Hollande brought Mr. Macron to the Élysée Palace as deputy chief of staff. As business leaders threatened to leave France, citing the tax policy, Mr. Macron warned his boss in an email that he risked turning France into “Cuba without the sun.”.. Mr. Macron invited Sigmar Gabriel, then Germany’s economy minister and vice chancellor, to a private dinner in Paris. They agreed to commission a report from economists that could serve as a blueprint for a grand bargain Mr. Macron envisioned to revive the EU’s fortunes: Germany would provide stimulus by spending more, and France would become a European model of economic rectitude by paring back its generous labor protections.
.. In his view, France’s job market was hemmed in by a rigid educational system that set young people on a narrow career trajectory and by labor rules that discouraged companies from hiring them.
.. “When a president names someone minister,” he said, it’s “not to make him a servant.”