Contrary to tradition, French President Emmanuel Macron did not address the French on the occasion of Bastille Day on July 14th. Instead, during a trip to France’s Pacific possessions, he chose to do an interview from New Caledonia, broadcast at 1 p.m. on Monday, July 24th, in which he spoke about the past few weeks, the crisis in France, and his plans for the new political year in September.
His address corresponded to the famous “hundred days” that he had announced in April after the vote on the pension reform. The President congratulated himself on his achievements: “The results are there and we are moving forward,” he assured journalists.
Referring to the wave of riots of unprecedented violence that has engulfed the country in recent weeks, Emmanuel Macron praised the effectiveness of the government’s response. “It only took four days to put an end to the riots,” he stressed. On several occasions, he hammered home the importance of maintaining order as the central value of his action: “our country needs a return to authority at every level, and first and foremost in the family,” he reiterated, continuing his message already delivered during the riots. To this end, he intends to press ahead with his plan to strengthen parental authority. It should be noted that with the ministerial reshuffle, the ministry of solidarity changed its name and reintegrated the family into its official remit, which had not been the case for many years.
Macron’s stated aim: “order, order, order.” This speech is supposed to send out a positive signal to an increasingly right-wing public on issues of security and immigration, but it is hard to be convinced by his words, given that the President is concerned with maintaining order in the short term, but did not give the impression, during the riots, that he had taken stock of the underlying causes of the social unrest.
No earth-shattering announcements were on the agenda for this speech, which consisted of a lot of repetition. Even though Macron was supposed to “take stock” of the past hundred days, he simply chose not to raise the issue of pensions, which he now considers to be definitively behind him.
The French president chose a conciliatory tone in his communication during a difficult time, but that tone had all the appearances of inertia.
For the coming months, the President mentioned four priority areas: full employment, ecological transition, public services, and security, while remaining very vague about the content of the reforms to be planned. On the subject of education, which is of concern to parents in the run-up to the start of the new school year, he reiterated promises already made in the past but which have not yet been fulfilled: “a teacher in every classroom” at the start of the new school year, thanks to “a series of small revolutions” involving training reform and better pay.
On the political front, the president acknowledged “a form of failure or difficulty in enlarging his majority,” and his inability to find an “alternative majority,” blaming the “oppositions” that he deemed insufficiently “constructive”—in other words, refusing to align themselves with his policies. Referring to the immigration bill due to be studied by MPs, he clearly called on Les Républicains to support the government’s plan, counting on “the republican opposition who want the country to be better protected at its borders, and better able to escort back to their country of origin those who have nothing to do with us, and in particular disturb public order.” For the time being, this support from Les Républicains is not a foregone conclusion, as scepticism reigns in the ranks of the right-wing party about the effectiveness and relevance of the reform wanted by Macron.
Following his speech, Emmanuel Macron is due to spend several days in the Pacific region. This is an opportunity for him to make progress on the institutional reform plans for New Caledonia. He is also due to visit—a first for a French president—territories in the Pacific that do not belong to France, such as Papua New Guinea, an independent Commonwealth country.
