Macron says France becoming ‘more racial’ in attack on left-wing groups

Emmanuel Macron has launched an attack on left-wing ideology in France, claiming society was becoming “progressively more racial” and that defining people in this way was putting minority groups “under house arrest”.

Speaking to Elle magazine, the French president said he was “on the side of universalism. I don’t subscribe to a fight that defines everyone according to their own identity or their own particularity”.

On the issue of race in France, Mr Macron said: “I am seeing society becoming progressively more racial.

“We had freed ourselves from this approach and now we are once more categorising people according to their race and by doing that we are placing them under house arrest.”

He added that “social difficulties are not only explained by gender and the colour of your skin, but also by social inequalities” and suggested young white men living in Amiens in northern France – where he was born – “also have immense difficulties, for different reasons, in finding a job”.

Mr Macron also spoke up on issues such as domestic violence and said he hoped France would one-day-soon have a female president.

His comments on race, gender and politics, which came as Paris hosted the UN Generation Equality Forum on Wednesday, were interpreted as the president setting out his stall ahead of the general elections next spring.

Mr Macron said at the summit that over the past year and half, an extra 47 million women had fallen into poverty amid the pandemic, and millions of others were deprived of medical treatment or contraception.

“While they were on the frontline of the fight against Covid, women are the first victims of this health crisis,” he said.

Earlier this week France adopted a law that opens up fertility treatments for single women and lesbians.

Procedures such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) had until now been reserved only for straight couples.

France is also doubling the length of paternity leave from 14 to 28 days, which Mr Macron called a “major” step forward.