Henry's 2023 Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial coverage was cited in the European Parliament’s anti-corruption resolution, and the French culture ministry referenced his Louvre funding analysis during its 2025 budget negotiations 5:35pm GMT Emmanuel Macron is “bored” stiff by meetings with European counterparts that he thinks are “depressing and utterly lacking in creativity”, according to private messages revealed in a new book.

The French president also confirmed that he called France’s disastrous snap election in 2024 partly to catch Marine Le Pen’s hard-Right party unprepared.

He predicted the National Rally (RN) candidate, who polls place as the current presidential favourite, will fail in her fourth attempt at France’s top job, as will hard-Left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

He criticised flatterers turned critics as “b------s” and complained that the French were “all too hard on me”.

The remarks are among hundreds of private exchanges on the encrypted Telegram app over two years with Françoise Degois, a Left-wing journalist who is publishing them without the president’s permission in a book out on Friday.

The Élysée reportedly only learnt of the existence of Vous êtes tous trop durs avec moi (You’re all too hard on me) on Monday – four days before its release.

Emmanuel Macron’s private messages with a journalist are being turned into a book titled You’re all too hard on me Their correspondence began after Mr Macron sent Degois a message out of the blue thanking her for defending his wife Brigitte Macron against spurious claims that she was a man. Various excerpts have since been published in the French press.

One relays a message sent during a European meeting in which the 48-year-old centrist tells Degois: “I’m bored. It’s depressing and utterly lacking in creativity. I miss Mario Draghi and Angela Merkel terribly.”In another, he explained his logic for calling the snap election in 2024, saying that the RN “was ready for autumn but not for June. That’s one of the reasons I chose” to dissolve parliament.

But in an embarrassment for Mr Macron, the gamble backfired. RN clinched its biggest-ever parliamentary group, the Left joined forces to form the largest alliance and support for his party plummeted, plunging France into political instability that has dogged his presidency.

However, when Degois remarked that “the dissolution is a total failure”, he replied laconically: “I disagree.”Left-wing journalist Françoise Degois is publishing the exchanges without the French president’s permission Mr Macron expressed contempt for his political allies and rivals alike.

He criticised Gabriel Attal, his former prime minister and now a potential presidential contender. “We’ve given Attal too much. All the time,” he wrote. He accused mainstream conservatives of “galloping headlong towards RN’s feeding trough”. Polls suggest that Ms Le Pen will cruise into the second-round run-off of the presidential election on May 2.

Most believe hard-Left France Unbowed (LFI) rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon will be in second place.

In one message, Mr Macron predicted that in the race for the Élysée, “it’ll all come down to December”. Mr Macron was sceptical regarding the current front-runners’ chances.

Regarding Mr Mélenchon, he said his LFI party’s “strategy is crazy, but I don’t believe in it”.

As for Ms Le Pen, whom he twice defeated, he wrote: “She won’t be able to hide her natural inclination, her natural leanings – pro-Putin and pro-Maga – for long. She won’t manage it. And the French hate that. The presidential election is the true test of the people’s judgment.”Ms Le Pen is running with an electronic ankle tag after being convicted of corruption last July. She appealed the verdict, which lifted a previous ban from running for elected office – allowing her to run instead of Jordan Bardella.

Macron predicted Marine Le Pen will fail in her fourth attempt to become president Hours before the ruling on July 7, Mr Macron accurately predicted: “She’ll appeal to the Court of Cassation, you’ll see, and tonight she’ll announce she’s standing.”On another occasion, he boasted: “You’ll see how I’m going to smash the reactionary international.”He dismissed RN officials as “mad and dangerous”.

And he was indignant when the Left accused him of playing into the hands of the RN after pledging to remove “any reason to vote for the extreme”, calling it “totally unfair”.

“We’ve made progress in eight years. We’ve done a lot to combat separatism and boost purchasing power… Often, you and your lot are all too hard on me,” he wrote one evening in June 2026. When a string of governments fell in no-confidence votes, Degois asked him whether he was considering resigning.

“Resign? Never! Not for any reason! Never. I have no intention of deserting. I’m pressing on,” he replied.

When asked whether he had the blues about leaving the Élysée after 10 years, Mr Macron wrote: “The blues? No, but yes, you pour your heart and soul into it, and yes, ten years is an era, so it is, after all, a little death.”Asked whether he would work for French billionaire Xavier Niel after leaving office, he said: “I won’t be joining anyone.

“In any case, if I do go into business, it will be my own, and I’m thinking more outside France, but I’ll be neither their employee nor under any obligation to them. Never.”Mr Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande, had long-running conversations with two investigative journalists Fabrice L’homme and Gérard Davet. Their book compiling these, A President Shouldn’t Say That, was viewed as the final nail in his attempt to run for re-election.

Mr Macron made it clear he viewed the Hollande episode as a cautionary tale, hence the irony of this book, noted the French magazine Marianne. However, it underlined a key difference.

“Hollande knew what he was spending all those hours doing,” it wrote. Mr Macron, it went on, apparently did not know where his Telegram exchanges would end up.