On the evening of 24 September 2026, Emmanuel Macron spent nearly 40 minutes answering questions from journalists Guillaume Boulot and Caroline Roux on TF1 and France 2. The president, who had returned from New York after speaking at the UN, spoke about rising fuel prices, the Russian threat and international conflicts that strike directly at the wallets of the French. The audience numbered 8,6 million viewers — nearly half of television viewers at that time.
Seven months before the presidential election of 2027, Macron has apparently decided to break with his recent reticence. He had last given a similar joint interview on two channels in June 2024, shortly before the dissolution of the National Assembly. This time he explained his motive himself: "My duty is to enlighten the French and to let them feel the complexity of the reality that I know."
During his years in power, Macron has repeatedly resorted to direct addresses precisely when international events began to affect everyday life. During the pandemic, the energy crisis of 2022 and after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, he regularly appeared on screen to link global threats to domestic consequences. Opponents criticised such addresses as overly dramatic, but the data show that the president's approval rating often stabilised after such broadcasts.
Now the institutional constraints are especially tight: Macron can no longer run again, the coalition in parliament is fragile, and the budget for 2027 requires opposition support. The interview allowed him at once to defend Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his plan to save 54 billion euros, to call for "responsibility" and to reject the "demagogy" of the presidential candidates. At the same time, he admitted a rare failure: "I did not convince."
The public image of "the president who explains the world" diverges from the documented practice: in recent months Macron has indeed been more restrained, limiting himself to meetings with party leaders and brief statements. The return to prime time on the two main channels looks not accidental but a calculated step — to remind everyone that he remains the main source of information about "real complexity."
It resembles the situation when a ship's captain in a storm steps onto the bridge not to steer onward, but to explain to the crew why the course cannot be changed abruptly. Viewers see not so much new decisions as confirmation of an old role: Macron still considers himself the one who connects the global and the local, even when his powers are already limited by time.
In the end, the interview shows not merely a reaction to the fuel price crisis, but the president's enduring habit of using the media as a tool for preserving influence at a moment when formal power is already slipping away.
