Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of La France Insoumise, savaged the partnership between Mr Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying it “humiliates” the remaining EU member states. He delivered the stinging rebuke to Mr Macron a week after the young president laid out his vision for a post-Brexit EU in the run up to the May elections and called for a “European Renaissance”. Mr Melenchon said EU citizens are facing “an emergency” because they are under threat from a “system of production and exchange that destroys the earth and human beings”.
Writing in Italian newspaper La Republic on Monday, he said the fact that Hungary’s populist prime minister Viktor Orban welcomed Mr Macron’s reforms should “annoy” the French.
He said: “In Europe the time has come to speak the only truly international language, able to motivate the common action of people with different backgrounds, languages and cultures.
“It is the language of common goods to defend and extend. That of common life projects. That of social rights and public services to be rebuilt after the destruction of thirty years of free and uncontrolled competition.
“It is the language of peace, facing the war ravings against the Russians and the war provocations of NATO.”
He took aim at the relationship between Mr Macron and Ms Merkel, whom he said “embody the old morbid recipes”.
He added: “We have nothing to do with the pseudo Franco-German couple, this pretentious partnership controlled by the CDU.
“It humiliates the other 26 states and isolates the French from their natural parents of the South.”
And despite ongoing tensions between the EU and Russian over the Ukraine conflict, he argued that Moscow had the potential to be a partner of France, as opposed to an enemy.
He went on to accuse Mr Macron of conducting a “ferocious crackdown” against Yellow Vest protesters, who have taken to the capital’s streets for 17 weeks in a row to protest against the president’s policies.
He said: “In contrast to these brutalities, a policy is needed that goes straight to the causes of forced exiles: wars, climate change, economic looting.”
The far-left politician also used his platform to call for a change in the way the bloc is run, saying the people of Europe need an “urgent” change of direction.
He added: “The Renaissance that Europe needs is that of political rights and its peoples.
“If France can be useful to something, it is to this. As long as it presents itself as a partner rather than a teacher giving lessons.”