For the first time since the adoption of the pension bill, President Emmanuel Macron addressed the French people directly in a highly anticipated televised address on Monday, April 17th.
Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation on the 8 p.m. news in front of just over 15 million viewers. Since the adoption of the law on March 20th through the use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution, the President had not directly spoken to such a large audience. Although he did make an appearance on the 1 p.m. news show, this time frame has far fewer viewers than the evening news, and he gave a polemical interview with the children’s newspaper Pif Gadget, as mentioned in The European Conservative.
In his speech, the president insisted on justifying once again the unpopular reform as a “necessity.” After emphasising the importance of implementing this reform in order to keep French “independence,” he called for “appeasement.” He proposed meeting with the unions as soon as possible. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne supported the president’s speech, seeing in the coming weeks the opportunity for a new start. She explained that she wanted to present a “new roadmap” for the government next week.
The president used the expression ‘Cent-jours’ (one hundred days), frequently used in French political rhetoric, in reference to Napoleon’s return to power in 1814. It signifies a moment of intense action and political renewal. However, the reference to one hundred days has a darker flip side, as the regional newspaper Ouest-France reminds us: the period of the Hundred Days ended … with Napoleon’s calamitous defeat at Waterloo and the end of the Empire.
The opposition parties were unanimous in denouncing the presidential address, judged “completely out of touch with reality” by the leader of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The deputy Manuel Bompard, representing La France Insoumise in the National Assembly, stressed the “arrogance” and “contempt” of the presidential speech—a speech considered “abysmally hollow.” The communist deputy, Fabien Roussel, summed up the speech concisely, saying: “Those who did not listen have lost nothing.”
This unambiguous observation was shared by the various political groups on the Right. Marine Le Pen judged Emmanuel Macron’s speech to be “disconnected” from the French and reproached him for having missed the opportunity to renew the link with his people, by proposing either the abrogation of or a referendum on the unpopular law. She also underlined the head of state’s contempt. Like the Left, Éric Ciotti, president of right-wing party Les Républicains, whose governing bodies nevertheless supported the law, called Macron’s remarks inconsistent and empty and referred to them as “a catalogue of pious wishes with very little concrete content.”
Emmanuel Macron’s speech took place in a climate of tension throughout France. Demonstrators gathered in unauthorised protests, banging pots and pans to show their contempt and their refusal to listen to the televised speech.
In Marseille, the police banned all demonstrations, while opponents of Emmanuel Macron proposed meeting in front of the town hall. They finally gathered at the Old Port. The demonstrators simply said, “Macron doesn’t hear us, we won’t listen to him.”
In an interview with Le Figaro, political communication specialist Arthur Benedetti said he believes that the presidential address will in no way extinguish the “social fire.” He predicted that the mobilisation, in renewed forms, would continue in the coming weeks.
