France’s Macron Preaches Hope to Gritty Suburbs

Local Editor

From across France they came to meet the man who had promised, if elected president in May, to "emancipate" immigrant families and free them from the gritty high-rises that ring French cities.

The excitement was palpable as a microphone was passed through a hall in the tough Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, where a hundred high achievers gathered this week to share their stories of against-the-odds success with centrist maverick Emmanuel Macron.

For two hours the 39-year-old candidate listened to, and fielded questions from entrepreneurs, bankers, journalists and civil servants with the kind of names -- mostly Arab or West African -- that in France often see a CV pushed to the bottom of the pile.

"I'm happy," Khadija Moudnib, the 39-year-old deputy mayor of the western Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, told AFP.

"Usually politicians come to the suburbs when they're burning and then disappear again. Tonight we're not here to talk about those who burn cars. Most people here have masters degrees. Theirs are the stories that need to be highlighted."

Macron, who is running neck-and-neck with far-right leader Marine Le Pen in polls for the first round of the election on April 23, has promised to bring France's storied "banlieues", or suburbs, in from the cold with a two-pronged approach that stresses equality and entrepreneurship.

Addressing Thursday's gathering held next to the Stade de France national stadium, he vowed to reduce class sizes in tough neighborhoods, name-and-shame employers that discriminate against people on the basis of their origins, and promote micro-financing for suburban businesses.

The blue-eyed philosophy graduate, who studied at France's top finishing school before becoming a civil servant and then a Rothschild investment banker before he leaped into politics may seem an unlikely champion of the downtrodden.

Trade unions had accused him of promoting a race to the bottom by declaring that an Uber driver working up to 70 hours a week -- one of the few jobs readily available to low-skilled suburban youths in France -- had more "dignity" than someone without work.

But his unabashedly pro-business approach played well in immigrant communities, seen by some as more empowering than the paternalism of the left.

Taking to the floor at the event, Moudnib hailed Macron -- an economic liberal who is on the left on social issues -- as a role model.

"You've been accused of earning a lot of money at Rothschild but in the suburbs we want to be like you!," she told him, drawing laughter and applause.

"In France we have a unique characteristic," Macron replied. "We don't like failure and we don't like success."

france presidential elections | emmanuel macron

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team