Can candidate Emmanuel Macron use President Emmanuel Macron’s social media accounts to disseminate information about his campaign? The answer is no for the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign for the Presidential Election (CNCCEP). In a press release released Friday, March 11, the institution criticizes the outgoing president for having posted his candidacy letter on the official Twitter account of the Head of State, followed by 7.9 million subscribers.
“Such a message is related[e] electoral propaganda and given the characteristics of the use of this Twitter account, which has been used for a long time and predominantly to relay messages relating to the performance of his duties as President of the Republic, he [est] best not to use this account for posting such messages”estimates the CNCCEP in this press release. The message, which was still present on Thursdaywas deleted from the president’s Twitter account a few hours ago, according to research by the World. On Facebook, the message was still published on Friday morning before, again, being deleted at midday, in the wake of the CNCCEP press release.
A retweet of a message from the candidate’s account (@avecvous) by the head of state’s account on March 7, which relayed Mr. Macron’s trip to Poissy, has also been deleted in recent hours. In its press release, the commission therefore calls on the outgoing president to “refrain from using this account to disseminate messages relating to electoral propaganda for the duration of the campaign, these messages being intended to be disseminated on the account specially created by the candidate and his team for the needs of the campaign for the presidential election”.
tenuous border
In addition to this use of social networks, Emmanuel Macron has been regularly criticized in recent weeks for the porosity observed between the candidate in the campaign and the president in office. The candidate of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, notably judged “unhealthy” the start of Mr. Macron’s campaign, evoking on RMC on March 8 “the use of Elysée resources for the benefit of the candidate (distribution of the letter, video, etc.)” or “the mix of genres between the promises of the candidate and the checkbook used by the president”. In his viewfinder in particular, a video posted online on March 4 by Mr. Macron’s campaign team where we see the head of state at the Elysée return to his candidacy announcement.
In January, already, the opposition criticized the movements of the president, who was not yet a candidate. The president of the Republicans (LR), Christian Jacob, had notably accused Mr. Macron of doing “campaign on the means of the State” by increasing the number of trips in recent weeks, a situation “not far from the embezzlement of public funds”he thought in an interview at Figaro.
Since the official announcement of Mr. Macron’s candidacy, these reproaches also concern the ministers. While there is still no official campaign team around the Head of State, the opposition was thus surprised Thursday that it was the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, who announced on RTL one of the flagship proposals of the candidate of La République en Marche, the extension of the legal retirement age to 65 years.
“Minister Gabriel Attal announces a pension reform at age 65 in the name of candidate Macron. Dangerous and rude mix of genresin particular, denounced on Twitter, the LR MP Eric Ciotti. The massive use of state resources for campaigning poses a major democratic problem. “If Gabriel Attal wants to make campaign announcements, he must resign from the government”added another LR deputy, Pierre-Henri Dumont.