French president uses trip to Denmark to condemn people at home who are set in their ways

Emmanuel Macron has been attacked by political opponents for using a trip to Denmark to describe French people as “Gauls who are resistant to change”.

In Copenhagen, the pro-business French president repeated his habit of using trips abroad to deliberately make headline-grabbing comments about how in his opinion French people tend to be stuck in their ways.

Addressing a gathering of expats, the 40-year-old centrist first expressed admiration for Denmark’s economic model before lamenting France’s resistance to bringing in a similar system.

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The Nordic system, which combines a welfare state with a flexible labour market where it is easy to hire and fire, has in part inspired Macron’s loosening of French labour laws and his planned overhaul of French unemployment benefits.

But Macron said cultural differences between the “Lutheran” Danes and the French “Gauls” made it difficult to adopt the system in France.

“Let’s not be naive, what is possible is linked to a culture, to a people who are the product of their history,” he said. “These Lutheran people, who have experienced transformations in recent years, are not like the Gauls who are resistant to change,” he said, using a term for the ancient tribespeople that roamed France more than 2,000 years ago.

The far-right politician Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Macron in last year’s presidential election and is attempting to challenge him in the European elections next spring, called him “arrogant”. The traditional rightwing party, Les Républicains, said he was insulting “French identity” and that France was proud of its obstinate cartoon character Gauls: Asterix and Obelix.

The hard-left France Unbowed party said Macron was showing “disdain” to the French people, while trade unionists said the implication was that Gauls were mere commoners, beneath the kings.

Macron shot back that he had been “humorous” and stood by his comments on changing France. He told reporters: “I love France, I love our people and I think what our neighbours, partners and friends want to see is a France that is proud of itself and knows how to look hard at itself and history and the transformations under way.”

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He added: “It’s not contemptuous to tell the truth. We are not a country with a culture of consensus, of adjustments little by little.”

Macron has often used foreign trips to lament France’s resistance to reform, seen as a way for him to highlight his stated aim of “transforming” the country. In Greece last year he prompted controversy over the term “slackers” when he blasted what he deemed lazy, cynical and extreme opponents to change in France.

But some observers saw Macron’s comments in Copenhagen as an attempt to turn the spotlight back on to economic policy and his programme for European reform in the face of dipping poll ratings, slower growth predictions, stubborn unemployment and cabinet troubles at home.

This week, Macron was dealt a blow when his popular environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, suddenly quit the government, saying the president was not doing enough to counter climate change. He attacked Macron for being in thrall to powerful business and industry lobbies and interest groups.

The president had styled himself as a leader intent on “making the planet great again” in light of Donald Trump’s decision to remove the US from the Paris climate accords.

Macron is a political newcomer who, when he came to power last year, promised to break away from the establishment cronyism of the past. But he also came under fire on Thursday for appointing his close friend, the French novelist Philippe Besson, to the post of consul general for France in Los Angeles.

Besson is close to Macron and his wife, Brigitte, and wrote an overwhelmingly positive book on how Macron won the presidency in May 2017.

“There is no cronyism in exchange for favours,” Macron told reporters, saying he wanted “to open up all of the top state jobs to people with talent and strengths from all walks of life”.