French first lady says Macron deserves ‘respect’

French President Emmanuel Macron “deserves” respect and is “sometimes” hurt by criticism, his wife Brigitte said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

But she insisted he has no intention of resigning before the end of his term.

France has been mired in political deadlock since Macron gambled on snap elections last summer in a bid to bolster his authority and combat the surge of the far right.

The move backfired, with voters electing a parliament fractured between three rival blocs, while Macron’s approval ratings hover at record lows.

The 47-year-old French leader has been weakened by months of political crisis, with some opposition politicians urging him to resign.

“Sometimes what he hears hurts him. It’s very difficult. But he doesn’t say it. He keeps it to himself,” Brigitte Macron told TF1 television channel in rare public comments about her husband’s political standing.

“Before, he spoke much more easily. Now he doesn’t say it. And that I understand. Because if there’s one thing Emmanuel deserves, it’s respect.”

France’s first lady, 71, was asked about Macron, his relationship with the French, the dissolution of parliament and his desire to see his term of office through to the end.

Addressing French people in a televised address on New Year’s Eve, Macron admitted that dissolving parliament had “for now brought more divisions to the National Assembly than solutions”.

Brigitte Macron said that history will judge his decision.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “It’s not for me to say what I think, I’ve never said it and I never will.”

However, she admitted that the dissolution affected French people who she said were “anxious” and “a little lost.”

“Everyday life is very difficult”, Brigitte Macron said. “From abroad, France seems like a land of plenty, where you have health care, education, help, everything.”

She dismissed any suggestion that he might resign before the end of his second term in 2027.

“He said he would go all the way because that was the mission given to him by the French people,” she said, adding he cared “so much” about the French.

“He cares about everything and he puts all his intelligence, all his heart at the service of the French people.”