PARIS (Reuters) – Invested on Saturday for a second term at the head of France during a ceremony marked by gravity at the Elyse, Emmanuel Macron promised “to act” and to “bring together” the country to build “a new contract productive, social and ecological”.
The eighth president of the Fifth Republic, who won 58.5% of the vote in the second round of the presidential election on April 24 against the candidate of the National Rally Marine Le Pen, was reappointed for a second term, during a formal investiture ceremony at the Elyse Palace, in the presence of 500 guests.
“Acting will mean (…) not administering the country, chaining reforms as we would give ready-made solutions to our people”, declared the Head of State in a speech of about ten minutes.
“The action in these times is twinned with gathering, respect, consideration, the association of all. This is why we must, all together, invent a new method, far from the rites and choreographies used, by which alone we can build a new productive, social and ecological contract”, he added.
He said he wanted to share “the objectives, ambitions and responsibilities at the national level” and make “the government, the administration, the Parliament, the social partners, the associations work together”, i.e. “all the active political forces , economic, social and cultural to decide and do”.
Emmanuel Macron then made the youth “the oath to bequeath a more livable planet and a livelier and stronger France”.
The President of the Constitutional Council, Laurent Fabius, had announced just before the result of the election in the village hall of the Elyse.
DFIS COME
The former Socialist Prime Minister recalled that the first mandate of the President of the Republic had been “impacted by an accumulation of crises and upheavals on the health, security, social, energy and financial levels”, with the consequence “a certain malaise democratic”.
“In these troubled times let us be servants of the law and slaves of duty,” he added, quoting the words of Victor Hugo.
Emmanuel Macron, whose first term was marked by the social crisis of “yellow vests”, a pandemic and a war in Ukraine, will have to work in a France more divided than ever.
A few weeks before the legislative elections of June 12 and 19, while the far right and far left parties have upset the political landscape, he must reconcile himself with the intermediary bodies who reproach him for his lack of compromise and the millions of French who consider him arrogant.
The former president Franois Hollande insisted at the end of the ceremony on the fact that the “methods of yesterday” could not be renewed today.
“What we have seen in this election is that there were more citizens who, today, were more in rejection than in hope. It is this hope that we must recreate,” he said.
Under Republican protocol, the Head of State received from the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor the insignia of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and heard the 21 cannon shots fired from the Invalides.
DIVERSITY OF GUESTS
Among the guests, we could recognize members of Jean Castex’s government, former presidents Franois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, members of major institutions such as the Court of Cassation, the Council of State and the Court of Auditors as well as representatives of religious authorities.
Also present were big bosses like Xavier Niel, founder of the Iliad group, actors like Franois Cluzet and Guilllaume Gallienne, former Prime Ministers Edouard Philippe, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Manuel Valls, members of the president’s family and his wife Brigitte, as well as the parents of Samuel Paty, teacher victim of a terrorist attack in 2020.
The Head of State will attend Saturday the final of the Coupe de France football which will oppose Nantes and Nice at the Stade de France and will chair the ceremonies of May 8 on the Champs-Elyses on Sunday.
On Monday, Emmanuel Macron will go to the Strasbourg Parliament, Europe Day, while France holds the presidency of the European Council until July 1.
He will then travel to Berlin for a meeting and dinner with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which will be his first trip abroad as President.
The current mandate of the head of state, who has not yet changed prime minister, expires on the evening of May 13.
At 44, Emmanuel Macron is the first full-fledged president of the Fifth Republic to be re-elected outside the period of cohabitation.
(Report Elizabeth Pineau, told by Caroline Paillez)
by Elizabeth Pineau