The president-candidate had to give up the use of his personal Twitter account after a decision by the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign.
Emmanuel Macron’s team demands, on Sunday March 20, that his opponents be subject to the same rules on social networks as the president-candidate, forced to delete messages relating to his presidential campaign broadcast on his personal accounts.
In a letter to the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign (CNCCEP) revealed by the JDD and that AFP has obtained, the Macron camp deplores “a difference in means of communication which does not seem justified to us”.
The CNCCEP had judged on March 11 “that, given the characteristics of the use” of the official Twitter account @EmmanuelMacron (7.9 million subscribers), “used for a long time and in a predominant way to relay messages relating to exercise of his functions as President of the Republic”, it was “preferable not to use this account to broadcast” campaign messages.
Since then, the Macron camp has been using the @avecvous account, created for the presidential election and much less followed (23,000 subscribers).
However, several rivals of the president-candidate continue to use their usual accounts, such as the candidate LR Valérie Pécresse (446,000 subscribers on Twitter), also president of the Ile-de-France region, or the socialist Anne Hidalgo, mayor de Paris (1.5 million subscribers).
Audience decline
A situation deplored by the Macron camp, which notes in its letter “that none of the candidates, with the exception of ours, has so far applied” the recommendations of the CNCCEP.
Taking for example the program on TF1 “facing the war”where Emmanuel Macron’s supporters were “the only ones not to use the personal account” of their candidate, recording an “audience capacity” of 3%, “the lowest of all the candidates”.
In its letter to the CNCCEP, Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team therefore “hopes” that the commission’s recommendation will henceforth be “applied with the same diligence by all the other candidates who have used their personal account”.
Contacted on March 11 by BFMTV about the use of social networks by Valérie Pécresse and Anne Hidalgo, the CNCCEP never responded.
