Emmanuel Macron arrived in Corsica this Wednesday afternoon, where he immediately joined local elected officials to try to agree on a common position before his long-awaited speech on Thursday on possible autonomy for the island.
“First I will listen to all the political leaders, the elected officials. We will work and move forward,” he declared, accompanied by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, during a crowd bath in front of the prefecture of Ajaccio, shortly before. a dinner with the main actors of the island.
“Model” of autonomy “to be invented”
At the end of these final debates, a cautious optimism reigned in the ranks of the nationalist guests, according to whom President Macron spoke of “a model” of autonomy “to be invented”, without mentioning his red lines and calling for “walking between totems” . and taboos.”
If the leader of the autonomists, Gilles Simeoni, cautiously, asked to wait for Thursday’s speech, the deputy of his party, Jean-Félix Acquaviva, saw “a will to converge to find points of balance strong enough to allow us to say that tomorrow we will be at an important, even historic moment.”
In this “cordial, sincere and frank exchange,” “the shadow of fear, fears and defensive strategies were not on the menu,” he stated.
“Can do it”
“I remain reasonably optimistic and this afternoon I have detected a will and a state of mind,” also confided the leader of the autonomist opposition, Jean-Christophe Angelini, ensuring that he had “some reasons to believe that he can do it.”
On the part of the local right, Jean-Martin Modoloni hopes that President Macron “sets the institutional course around a point of balance between the recognition of a singularity to which we are very attached and belonging to the Republic to which we do not We are less attached. The Head of State must speak on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. before the Assembly of Corsica.
Following the death in March 2022 of the independence activist Yvan Colonna, attacked in the Arles prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of the prefect Erignac, and the violent demonstrations that followed on the island, the government had opened debates, ensuring that it could “reach autonomy.”
Resident status, co-official status of the Corsican language…
The presidential address will therefore mark several months of exchanges between Corsican elected officials and state representatives. Almost united, the nationalists adopted on July 5 an autonomy project that advocated legislative power in all areas except the sovereign, a power that would be entrusted to the assembly of Corsica, where they occupy three quarters of the seats. They also want resident status, the co-official status of the Corsican language and the inclusion of the notion of Corsican people in the Constitution.
A second text from the right-wing minority opposition was also sent to the president, calling for a simple “power to adapt” French laws to Corsican specificities.
“Red lines”
In an interview on Monday at Corsica-morningBruno Retailleau, president of the Les Républicains group in the Senate, warned that the nationalists’ demands crossed “red lines.”
However, the Head of State will need a three-fifths majority, and therefore of the Republicans, in Congress (National Assembly and Senate combined) to engrave in stone any institutional development of the island in the Constitution. Hence his request, in advance, for a political agreement on the island between nationalists and the right-wing opposition.
If such an agreement is reached, “the President of the Republic will undoubtedly say that he is willing to consider an institutional evolution in accordance with the republican framework,” an advisor to Emmanuel Macron observed on Tuesday.
80th anniversary of the Liberation of Corsica
This mention of a possible agreement by the presidency had led Paul-Félix Benedetti, leader of the independentists of Core in Fronte, to boycott Wednesday night’s dinner with President Macron, whose red lines – keeping Corsica in the Republic and refusing to create two categories of citizens – correspond to the foundations of the nationalists.
In addition to this political component, the president will also pay tribute during this visit, the fifth to the island since 2017, to the Corsican resistance fighters on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the island in 1943. Thursday at noon in Ajaccio, Emmanuel Macron will salute the memory of the Corsican resistance fighter Fred Scamaroni and then that of Danielle Casanova, a Corsican communist resistance fighter who died during the deportation to Auschwitz.
Then he will travel to Bastia to carry out a weapons test in the presence of military units whose history is linked to the liberation of Corsica. Corsica was the first French territory liberated, on October 4, 1943, thanks to a popular insurrection and the help of French troops from Africa.
Source: BFM TV
