In a long interview with the weekly, the candidate president plays the “confession” card twelve days before the first round, addressing pell-mell Ukraine, Europe, his record at the Elysée, death or his ambitions of writer.
A “Macron matured”says point, “who thinks longer before answering”. Pledge of caution, twelve days before an uncertain second round, for a head of state accustomed to “small sentences”. In a river interview granted to the weekly point published this Tuesday evening online, Emmanuel Macron looks back on the results of his five-year term, evokes the war in Ukraine, and delivers on love or death.
After a first round which saw the voice gap with his far-right opponent narrow on Sunday, it’s time for the outgoing president to go on the offensive. “One of the challenges of this second round is to highlight the truth of the far-right candidate’s project”, attacks Emmanuel Macron from the second question. And to unfold, without mentioning the name of Marine Le Pen: “Project of submission abroad, project of leaving Europe, project of division of the French, project of climatic regression, project which would threaten our pensions, our savings, our jobs.”
“Change of Era”
castigating the “fallback project” of the far-right candidate, the Elysée tenant takes care not to target Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his 7.7 million votes in the first round, which promise to be crucial for the second. According to him, a “majority” of French has therefore “chooses candidates who carry a project of openness, independence and progress such as [il le] do [t]». A nod to the left-wing electorate who opted for the “useful vote” on Sunday. And that Macron hopes to dredge by April 24.
Long questioned about the war in Ukraine, the Head of State assures that the“we are at the beginning of a change of era”. “We can die again” on the “European soil” he said thus. Essay on the “feeling of humiliation” felt in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the USSR, the Head of State points to a responsibility of the West, that of having left this feeling “prosper”. “The resentment then metabolized into paranoia”he adds.
On the 48th day of war in Ukraine, Macron now believes that Putin has “decided he wouldn’t stop” his offensive, because “he needs a military victory for himself”. Criticized for his dialogue with the Russian president, which he continues to maintain despite the abuses of the Russian army, Macron defends himself: “If he doesn’t talk to anyone anymore, then we don’t know how far he can go. It’s my obsession with him, I tell him every time. However, he recognizes that the bombardments in Mariupol and the massacres in Boutcha are “irreversible”.
“A project for outsiders”
Justifying his “whatever the cost” drawn at the start of the health crisis, Macron reiterates that “it was the best possible public expenditure”. “This debt is a very good debt”he dares further, while the right accused him during the campaign of “burn the cash register”. However, did he have the “easy checkbook” he who, in 2017, proposed to achieve 60 billion euros in budgetary savings? “Nope”, he replies by justifying the need for the tariff shield on energy in particular. Anxious not to tarnish his credibility on budgetary issues, he takes care further to tackle “the deception” by Marine Le Pen concerning the abolition of VAT on a basket of basic necessities. “You have to assume that you can’t do everything! Marine Le Pen, in particular, talks nonsense.
Operating a turn on the cleavage between “progressive” and “nationalists” that he has theorized since 2017, Macron now assures that a “need for limits exists”. “That’s why I talk about everyday progress and no longer really progressivism. Because progressivism held up as a banner can sometimes appear as a boundless headlong rush, as a dispossession of what is. But Western societies do not want that, to be dispossessed., he explains. A catchphrase to unfold its priorities for a second lease at the Elysée. A “project for outsiders” aimed at correcting “root inequalities” and fight against “lives prevented”. Thus the orientation reinforced in 5th, the reform of the vocational high school or greater freedom granted to the directors of establishments.
After five years of exercising power marked by crises, Emmanuel Macron also returns to the assassination of Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine or the death of the two commando members Hubert Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello, killed in the Sahel in May 2019. “Being president means living with thatconfesses Macron. Pierrepont and Bertoncello, I can still hear the air that was played for them by Bagad de Lann-Bihoué during the tribute ceremony. The one who dreamed of being a writer in his youth concludes his river interview by saying that he “accumulated” from “stories” : “My life is a writing, that’s how I live it.”
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