The speech caps a tumultuous 2024 for Macron, who shocked the nation halfway through the year by calling early elections, a gamble that backfired when voters delivered a hung parliament with a big increase in far-right lawmakers, diluting Macron’s power. “Lucidity and humility force [me] to recognise that at this stage, this decision has produced more instability than peace, and I fully own up to that,” Macron said in a televised address ahead of New Year’s celebrations. “The dissolution caused more divisions in the Assembly than solutions for the French people,” he said in the clearest mea culpa since the elections.