President Emmanuel Macron during a press conference on January 16, 2024 at the Elysée in Paris. (AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
Emmanuel Macron multiplied the announcements on Tuesday during a press conference with proactive accents to promise “a fairer and stronger France” around his concept of “rearmament”, emphasizing youth with the return of the uniform to school and the regulation of screens.
A week after the appointment of a new government, the Head of State wanted to set his course, “to state the deep meaning” of his action, before Gabriel Attal detailed his roadmap on January 30 before Parliament.
In his general policy declaration, the youngest French Prime Minister will probably have to return to certain annoying measures, such as the expected increase in electricity prices, or specify the contours of the new economic and social reforms only touched upon by the president.
In front of his almost entire ministers and numerous journalists gathered in the village hall of the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron outlined for two hours and twenty minutes, in prime time on television in this rare exercise for him, his desire to fight “rents ” and break the “taboos”, after a year 2023 marked by the chaotic adoptions of laws on pensions and immigration. A way, says those around him, of “returning to the sources” of the macronism of 2017 which had sometimes been lost along the way.
He urged his troops to “dare what we no longer even dared to think”, without “being afraid of raising certain discontent”.
“I am convinced” that “our children will live better tomorrow than we live today,” he assured.
The president defended his new Minister of Education Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who was “right to apologize” for her “clumsy remarks” which placed her at the center of a lively controversy about the schooling of his children in the private sector.
“We will continue to attack with force” unreplaced hours in schools, he insisted, also rejecting any “conflict” between public and private schools.
He also praised the merits of Sarkozy Rachida Dati, appointed to the Ministry of Culture despite her indictment in a case of alleged corruption. And he strongly attacked the National Rally, promising to “fight until the last quarter of an hour” against the party of “collective impoverishment” and “lies”, which dominates the polls six months before the European elections.
President Emmanuel Macron during a press conference, January 16, 2024 at the Elysée, in Paris (AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
Emmanuel Macron also said he had “no regrets” for having defended the “presumption of innocence” of the actor Gérard Depardieu, while conceding a “regret” for “not having said enough how much the words of the women who are victims of this violence is important.
First axis of the measures announced Tuesday: youth and schools. The Head of State intends to regulate the use of screens “for our children”, based on the recommendations of experts he brought together last week and will submit their report in March. Specifying that there will “perhaps be bans” and “restrictions” for young users.
– Towards a generalization of the SNU –
He wants to “rebuild civic education”, the number of hours of which will be doubled, with one hour per week from fifth grade, and wants “theater to become an obligatory part of middle school from the next school year”. So that “each generation” learns “what the Republic means”.
Another emblematic measure: the “unique outfit” will be tested for students this year in around a hundred establishments, with a view to possible generalization in 2026. Also returning, the graduation ceremonies “from this year” to college.
“We will move towards the generalization of the Universal National Service in second grade”, also announced Emmanuel Macron, giving an appointment “in the coming weeks” on this project opened from his first five-year term.
All accompanied by a mea culpa on “equal opportunities”: “I must clearly recognize that after six and a half years (…), we have improved things but we have not radically changed them” . The future of children “still remains too determined by the family name, the place where one was born, the environment to which one belongs.”
Second theme addressed: security. Ten “clearance” operations will be carried out every week against drug trafficking, he promised, in a desire to restore “order”.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (c) and Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire during President Emmanuel Macron’s press conference at the Elysée, on January 16, 2024 in Paris (AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
On the economic front, the president asked his government for measures to “earn a better living through work”. He also wants civil servants to be paid more “on merit”.
Emmanuel Macron also defended the doubling of medical franchises, to 1 euro, a measure envisaged for several months which would not be “a terrible crime”, and said he wanted the regularization of “a number of foreign doctors” to fight against deserts. medical.
A novelty in his speech: the tenant of the Elysée spoke of a “democratic rearmament” to revive the birth rate, with the creation of a six-month “birth leave” to replace parental leave, better paid, as well as a “big plan” against infertility.
– “Lunar and paternalistic” –
Internationally, the head of state announced that he would return to Ukraine in February for the second time since the start of the war, announcing new arms deliveries so as not to “let Russia win”.
President Emmanuel Macron during a press conference, January 16, 2024 at the Elysée, in Paris (AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
Outside of his re-election campaign, Emmanuel Macron only took part in this exercise of a long, all-out press conference once, on April 25, 2019.
“Macron has avoided all the subjects that interest the French” for a “lunar and paternalistic general policy speech”, denounced the head of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier.
“Macron continues reactionary clichés, repeats broken promises and announces a new stage of social mistreatment,” added the coordinator of La France insoumise Manuel Bompard.
The head of the Republicans Eric Ciotti deplored that “the ambitions” are “as monumental as the announcements are modest”, while the leader of the RN Marine Le Pen criticized “an umpteenth and endless chatter, a self-esteem without height, without vision and above all without solutions to the critical problems of the French”.
© 2024 AFP
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