With the approval of barely one-in-five of his fellow countrymen – and soon to see the other half of the once essential French-German alliance swing dramatically to the right – France’s Emmanuel Macron is increasingly isolated. 

Once seen as the rising star of European politics, the French president – who on Monday will be in Washington, D.C. – was humiliated in back-to-back elections last summer. First, in a June vote for France’s representatives in the European Parliament, in which the nationalist party National Rally more than doubled the votes earned by Macron’s coalition, then having his Ensemble party end snap elections a month later with just the third-largest block in parliament.

Though Macron was able to stay on as president, the election results obligated Macron to give a larger voice in his government to opposition figures, a development that is making governing difficult. Late last year, Macron said he was “ashamed” of the ministers he was forced to appoint. 

“I did not choose this government,” the 47-year-old leader reportedly told a confidante. 

Now, when German voters go the polls Sunday, theywill almost surely reject the government of center-left leader Olaf Scholz, Macron’s most important ally among European Union leaders.  

If it wasn’t already dead, the Franco-German bilateral alliance that helped found the European Union in the aftermath of World War II and defined the bloc for decades, a loss by Scholz' government would almost certainly come to an end. 

All this is taking place as Macron’s level of support among his compatriots has sunk to new all-time lows. 

Despite some high points last year – he oversaw the successful Summer Olympics and the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing – a survey released in late January by French pollster IFOP showed that just 21% of French voters were happy with Macron’s government. Media reports said he was left feeling “sad and isolated” due to his recent troubles. 

“I just don’t see how he can bounce back, there’s no clear path,” a former Macron aide told the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph. “The ambience in the Elysée [the French equivalent to the White House] is morose.”

But Macron hasn’t stepped back from promoting his views internationally, despite mixed reviews. 

In 2022, he was the last major Western leader to visit Russia President Vladimir Putin before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Less than three weeks before the start of the war, Macron said Putin had given him assurances he had no intentions to invade its southern neighbor. 

In an effort to curry favor with the new U.S. president, Macron was the first major world leader to congratulate Donald Trump on his election victory in November (beating Italy’s Giorgia Meloni by six minutes), and this week he will become the first European leader to visit Trump after his inauguration(beating the U.K.’s Keir Starmer by three days). 

More recently, Macron warned the war in Ukraine could expand into World War III (“There’s a conflict in Ukraine in which the Russians as a matter of fact, have made things global,” Macron said) and issuing a stern warning to Trump in his own dealings with Putin (“You can’t be weak in the face of Putin,” Macron said).

And just last week, Macron appeared to try to reassert his leadership within the Europe by calling EU leaders to an emergency summit in Paris on how the end the 3-year-long Russia Ukraine war. However, the leaders 

However, the Paris talks only exposed divisions between the countries and highlighted how they have so far failed to agree on a coherent plan for supporting Ukraine its now 3-year-long war with Russia , analysts have told the Kyiv Independent.