French President Emmanuel Macron drew unusual attention at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday by addressing global leaders while wearing blue-tinted, mirrored aviator sunglasses indoors.
Images of the French president on stage quickly circulated online, triggering speculation about his personal life and reviving references to a viral video from last year in which his wife, Brigitte Macron, appeared to strike him playfully as they disembarked from an aircraft. Macron later dismissed the incident as a joke, but it has remained a recurring subject of online commentary.
The renewed speculation, however, was misplaced, according to Macron and French officials.
Macron has been dealing with a minor eye condition after suffering a burst blood vessel, known medically as a sub-conjunctival haemorrhage. The condition is harmless, painless and temporary, but can leave the eye visibly red. He was first seen wearing sunglasses during public appearances in France days before Davos, including at a military event, where he apologised for the appearance of his eye and described the issue as “completely insignificant”.
He later joked about the injury, calling it “l’oeil du tigre”, or “the eye of the tiger”, suggesting it was a sign of determination rather than illness.
While the sunglasses drew outsized attention, Macron’s speech at Davos struck a serious and confrontational tone, focused on what he described as a dangerous global shift away from democracy, multilateralism and the rule of law.
Tariffs used as geopolitical weapons
Macron warned of a world increasingly shaped by force rather than rules, citing what he called a rise in autocracy, the normalisation of conflict and the erosion of international law. He pointed to Russia’s war in Ukraine, ongoing violence in the Middle East and conflicts across Africa as signs of what he described as “imperial ambitions resurfacing”.
“It’s a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest,” he said.
Without naming the United States directly, Macron criticised the use of tariffs as a geopolitical weapon, saying trade measures were being used to undermine export interests and, in some cases, as leverage against territorial sovereignty, a reference widely interpreted as an allusion to Washington’s threats of sweeping tariffs amid disputes over Greenland.
“Trade wars, protectionist escalation and races towards overproduction will only produce losers,” Macron said, calling for stronger global cooperation rather than economic confrontation.
He argued that Europe must respond by strengthening its own economic sovereignty, increasing investment in innovation and defending multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, which he said remained essential despite its flaws.
“We do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to obscurantism. And we do prefer the rule of law to brutality,” Macron said, closing his address.
French officials said the president’s health was not a concern and stressed that the sunglasses were a practical choice rather than a political signal, even as the imagery briefly overshadowed one of his most forceful international speeches in recent months.
-With agencies
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