Haxie Meyers-Belkin is pleased to welcome Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Lancaster University’s Management School in the UK. According to Foucart, France’s energy and economic crises expose a deeper collision between economic constraints, political accountability and an approaching presidential election. He interprets Emmanuel Macron’s rare Élysée meeting with party leaders over soaring energy prices as both an exercise in presidential legacy-building and an attempt to force prospective successors to confront high energy costs, rising borrowing costs, limited fiscal room and the radioactive pension reform.