For months now, European leaders and NATO have been raising alarms over a sharp rise in Russian hybrid threats with increasing urgency, calls that have been echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
A slew of social media users, however, are alleging he is not expressing his concerns for security purposes, but for his own benefit.
As French presidents cannot serve more than two consecutive terms, Macron will have to hand over the reins of power to his successor following the 2027 presidential election, set to take place next spring.
For this reason, according to several social media posts, Macron is exaggerating the threat and drawing France further into the war between Ukraine and Russia, as a means to justify a potential war with Moscow. The end goal? To cancel or postpone these elections and so stay in power, they claim.
Such posts have garnered thousands of views, and appear to have been fuelled by a meeting that Macron held with presidential hopefuls and party leaders in mid-September to brief them on the current security challenges facing France.
However, this is an unlikely and complicated strategy to implement. To understand why, The Cube, Euronews' verification team, spoke with French constitutional experts.
President cannot declare war
The main factor that pours cold water on these claims is the fact that the president's powers are limited by the constitution. Specifically, it says that they cannot unilaterally declare war.
"The constitution states that the president is the head of the armed forces," Guillaume Tusseau, constitutional law professor at the Sciences Po Law School, told The Cube. "But in this matter, he has to share his power with the government because the army is placed at the disposal of the government and not of the president of the republic."
"Based on Article 35 of the constitution, only parliament can authorise an armed intervention by French armed forces, and the government has to present that to parliament," he added. "So it's not the decision [that can be] formally [made by] the president."
Should a president decide to launch a war without consultation, this would constitute a violation of the constitution, which in turn could trigger impeachment proceedings.
Even if, for example, a country wages a war against France, the constitution still does not stipulate that this would automatically influence the timing of an election.
"The postponing of elections is not automatic at all [in case of a war], and my hunch is that it will be very difficult to [influence the timing]," Tusseau said.
This is because the timeline for elections to take place is clearly detailed in Article 7 of the constitution, which states that elections must be held "no fewer than 20 days and no more than 35 days before" the current president's term ends.
Tusseau noted that the constitution only allows for a limited postponement if one of the candidates dies or is incapacitated a few days before the first round, or between the first and second round.
Additionally, if France were directly under attack, elections could be postponed to guarantee the safety of voters.
"But if we read the constitution, nothing in it allows the president to postpone the elections [for the reasons claimed on social media]," Tusseau said.
Activating Article 16?
One key argument put forward by proponents of the original theory is that Macron would support being at war, as they claim this would allow him to use Article 16 of the constitution, and supposedly allow him to decide to stay in office as he sees fit.
Article 16 does grant the president exceptional powers if the country's institutions, independence and the integrity of its territory or the fulfilment of its international commitments are threatened "in a serious and immediate manner."
However, this still requires consultation with the prime minister, presidents of the assemblies and the Constitutional Council.
Baptiste Charvin, a constitutional lawyer who wrote his comparative law thesis on combating disinformation, explained that this is not the first time people have alluded to the threat of activating Article 16.
"As far as I can recall, it was invoked just before Macron took to the stage to announce the lockdown in 2020, and in 2022 following the outbreak of war in Ukraine," he said.
"The article in question seems to give rise to several misconceptions, and is mainly used to attack the executive, which is often accused of harbouring dictatorial ambitions," he added. "All the more so given that Macron cannot stand for a third term in 2027."
Charvin stressed that a "very high threshold of public calamity" must be reached for Article 16 to be activated. This condition was added during a constitutional amendment, specifically to limit abuses.
Here, he referred to former President Charles de Gaulle activating Article 16 in 1961 to handle the Algiers putsch, a military coup d'état staged by renegade French generals in Algeria.
Tusseau noted a caveat to activating Article 16: it requires the president to protect constitutional values, not amend the constitution.
"The philosophy of the device is that the president can only take legislative and administrative measures, but not constitutional ones, because the constitution establishes the timeframe for elections," he said. "Saying that the president could amend the constitution based on Article 16 is highly dubious for the vast majority of constitutional scholars."
Tusseau added that, while there is no empirical evidence that Macron might be brooding over plans to launch a war and postpone elections, considerations should be made regarding the strength of institutions to protect against abuse.
"Constitutional scholars and citizens must realise that there are weaknesses in our institutions, and, as we saw in Poland, in Hungary, in several constitutional countries, it's always possible to abuse constitutional devices despite careful drafting," he said.
