En Marche

April 2016 — a 38-year-old minister founds his own movement and upends French politics.

The founding

In April 2016, while still economy minister, Emmanuel Macron launched En Marche — a political movement deliberately positioned as “neither left nor right.” The name was both a slogan and a signature: his own initials, E.M., matched the movement’s.

The method

En Marche recruited candidates from civil society rather than party machines, ran a vast door-knocking listening exercise (la grande marche), and built a grassroots fundraising and organizing apparatus outside the traditional party system. It was a start-up applied to politics — fitting for a founder who preached the “start-up nation.”

The payoff

A year later, the movement’s candidate won the presidency, and in the June 2017 legislative elections En Marche and its allies won an absolute majority in the National Assembly — decapitating the Socialist Party and The Republicans in a single cycle. The movement was later renamed Renaissance (2022).

Source notes

Founding date, positioning, and the 2017 legislative result follow standard references and official election records.