It is a little after 10 a.m. this Friday, March 24, when Emmanuel Macron resigns. After a breakfast with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on the sidelines of the European Council in Brussels, the President of the Republic seized one of his mobile phones on which the number of King Charles III had been dialed. The state visit scheduled for Sunday March 26 to Wednesday March 29 is postponed, he confirms to the British sovereign, with a heavy heart. There will be no lavish dinner served at the Palace of Versailles with his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, nor a royal walkabout in Paris followed by a speech in the Senate, nor a trip to Bordeaux by train to emit less than CO2 : everything is cancelled. How to let the monarch venture into a country in the midst of a social conflagration?
The successor of Elizabeth II was delighted with this first official visit. But “It’s like that, we have no choice”, sighs on the BBC Sir Peter Westmacott, the former British ambassador to France. The popular mobilizations provoked by the pension reform, described across the Channel as “French demonstrations”, take a disturbing turn. The day before, more than a million people marched in the streets of Paris and the provinces to oppose the law which lowers the retirement age from 62 to 64, adopted without a vote by 49.3. The peaceful processions were followed by an incandescent night: in the streets strewn with garbage since the garbage collectors went on strike, the garbage cans are on fire. In Bordeaux, the door of the town hall is set on fire. And a new day of mobilization is announced by the inter-union for Tuesday, March 28.
Officially, between Paris and Buckingham Palace, it is a joint diplomatic decision. But the British specify that the adjournment results from “the request of President Macron”. “We wouldn’t be serious (…) to propose to His Majesty the King and Queen to come and make a state visit in the midst of the demonstrations”justifies Emmanuel Macron from Brussels, Friday. “From the moment there was this day which had been decided, common sense and friendship lead us to propose a postponement. What would have been detestable for the British people as for ourselves, is to continue to maintain as if nothing had happened with incidents at the key “, develops the Head of State, evoking a reorganized visit “at the beginning of summer”, “when calm returns”.
“Logistical” problems
“We felt perfectly capable of maintaining order, but at what cost! », specifies the Elysée which underlines the problems “logistics” linked to the TGV that the king wanted to take in full strike in order to reach Bordeaux, the city of Aliénor and Henri II Plantagenêt. Since the outbreak of 49.3, the radicalization of the protest has put the forces of order under tension. Thursday March 23, some 12,000 CRS, police, gendarmes, BRAV-M were mobilized, including 5,000 in Paris. The anti-bass demonstrations scheduled in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) on March 25 require the deployment of 3,200 police and gendarmes. With a royal visit, the point of “capacity breakdown”, that is to say the maximum number of mobilized personnel, would have been reached, warn various police sources. At the top of the state, the fear of a fatal skid by a police officer or a gendarme resulting in the death of a demonstrator has been on people’s minds since the rejection of the motions of censure on Monday.
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