It is a tradition started by General de Gaulle in 1960: presidential greetings on the occasion of New Year’s Eve. Followed by many French, this event is an opportunity for the President of the Republic to take stock of the past year and plan for the next.
As in his previous five-year term, Emmanuel Macron will serve this year again this Saturday, after a year marked by the war in Ukraine, his re-election and the energy and inflationary crisis. Let’s go back to the previous speeches of him.
• December 31, 2017: “I will not stop acting”
In 2017, Emmanuel Macron broke the right-left divide and became President of the Republic at just 39 years of age. However, in his first wishes to the French, the new tenant of the Élysée does not dust off the exercise and follows in the footsteps of his predecessors. At least fit.
We see him solemn, with his hands on a marble table, sitting in his office on the corner of the Élysée. He briefly mentions his victory during the presidential election, not wanting to “waste too much time going back” to this event. To those who do not “share” his policy, “I respect them and I will always listen to them”, declares the Head of State.
However, “I will not stop acting”, despite the “discordant” voices, he assures, wishing that the “profound transformations” started in 2017 continue with “the same intensity for the year 2018”.
The President of the Republic is distinguished by a long speech of more than 17 minutes and is not far from surpassing the record set by Charles de Gaulle on December 31, 1961 (18 minutes). It will only be a postponement: in 2019, Emmanuel Macron exceeds this time by a few seconds.
The originality of his intervention also resides in the way in which he addresses the French. Calling several times for “cohesion” for 2018, he declares: “Our national cohesion also depends on your commitment.”
“Ask yourself every morning what you can do for the country,” he urges, insisting on a “stronger collective, bigger than you.”
A reference to John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In 1961, the former president of the United States declared on his inauguration day: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
• December 31, 2018: the counterattack against the crisis of the yellow vests
Two rooms, two rooms. On the one hand, the movement of the yellow vests that has been agitating France since November 17, putting an executive also weakened by the Benalla case in trouble. On the other, Emmanuel Macron standing up to present his wishes to the French and showing himself dynamic and conquering.
Far from being on the ball, the President of the Republic is on the offensive with respect to the social movement. If he first recognizes “great indifference and anger”, seeing there a “people that does not resign”, he lashes out, without naming the yellow vests, those “who take the pretext of speaking on behalf of the people”.
“But which one, from where? How?” he asks. Before denouncing the “spokesmen for a hateful crowd” who “attack elected officials, law enforcement, journalists, Jews, foreigners, homosexuals.”
This, “is simply the denial of France”, releases Emmanuel Macron.
The Élysée tenant criticizes a “sometimes flagrant denial of reality.” And he addresses: “We cannot work less, earn more, lower our taxes and increase our expenses, not change anything in our habits and breathe cleaner air.” Faced with this situation, Emmanuel Macron promises that “the republican order will be guaranteed without complacency.”
• December 31, 2019: take a step forward in the pension reform
Emmanuel Macron dedicates a large part of his speech to the pension reform. The social context is extremely tense. Since December 5, the country has faced an unprecedented strike movement in terms of its duration and scale.
Most unions oppose the executive’s plan. Even the CFDT showed its reluctance after Édouard Philippe mentioned the creation of a “fundamental age” at 64 and no longer just the abolition of special regimes as initially planned during Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign.
Remaining relatively silent so far, the head of state shows muscles. Noting that this is his third presidential wish, he introduces: “Usually this is the time when we give up acting forcefully so as not to upset anyone when future elections are coming up. […] We have no right to give in to this fatality. The opposite should happen.”
If he says that he understands “how much they can offend, arouse fears, oppose the measures taken”, he asks himself a question in the process: “Should we therefore give up changing our country and our daily lives?” And to answer himself:
“No, because that would be abandoning what the system has already abandoned. It would be betraying our children, their children after them, who would then have to pay the price for our resignations.”
The pension reform “will be completed”, promises Emmanuel Macron, raising praise for a “project of justice and social progress”. He concluded on the subject by urging his Prime Minister to find the “path of a quick compromise”, with “the unions and business organizations that so wish”.
The rest A bill approved by 49.3 at the end of February 2020 in the face of parliamentary obstruction, in particular from La France insoumise, which slowed down the debates, then abandoned the text due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since then, Emmanuel Macron has put the issue back on the agenda of his last presidential campaign. And, as a nod to his wishes for 2020, he could touch on this topic again during his speech on Saturday when the executive intends to present his pension reform project on January 10, 2023.
• December 31, 2020: Bringing “hope” after a year of pandemic
“We are not living a December 31 like the others,” Emmanuel Macron said from the beginning during his vows. The Covid-19 epidemic has been there and is still going on. “The year 2020 ends, then, as it was: with efforts and restrictions,” explains the president.
He reconfigured the country during the autumn, after a first confinement between March and May. He warns: “The first months of the year (2021) will be difficult, and at least until spring, the epidemic will weigh heavily on the life of our country.”
After this period, Emmanuel Macron wants to believe in “a new French morning, a European renaissance”. “Hope” is “there”, “it grows every day” and “lives”, insists the Élysée tenant in an anaphora. He sees it in particular with “this vaccine that human genius has achieved in just one year.”
The Head of State also speaks of “hope” and embodies it by enumerating a list of first names to pay tribute to their “exemplary trajectories, which are so many compasses for the times to come.” He mentions, for example, Mauricette, who, at the age of 78, became the first Frenchwoman to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
For Emmanuel Macron, “our Nation has gone through this year with such unity, with such resilience”, that “nothing can happen to it”.
“In 2021, whatever happens, we will be able to face the health, economic and social, terrorist and climate crises,” he insists.
• December 31, 2021: no balance to defend
Emmanuel Macron mentions the Covid-19 epidemic again during his wishes for 2022. In the midst of the fifth wave marked by the Omicron variant, the Head of State, however, wants to be resolutely optimistic. He points to “real reasons for hope” as “the vaccine weapon” and “our collective experience.”
This momentum goes hand in hand with defending his record just under four months before the presidential election. Emmanuel Macron thus boasts of his ability to reform the country, despite the health situation:
“Where we could have put it all off, we have never given up on our collective ambition,” he insists, citing the whirlwind “unemployment insurance reform, the youth commitment contract […] the premium for inflation, the energy check”.
The Head of State also cites words for “the ecological and climate emergency” such as “the development of renewable energy” or the “end of plastic packaging”.
However, the President of the Republic is careful not to announce any candidacy for a second five-year term. “I will act until the last day of the term in which I was elected,” he said, thus taking advantage of his position as head of state to delay his entry into the arena and place himself above the scrum of candidates.
He only leaves a hint by quoting the historian and resistance fighter March Bloch: “For my part, whatever my place and circumstances, I will continue to serve you. And from France, our homeland, no one can tear my heart out.” “, declares Amiens for what can be interpreted as an attack on the extreme right.
Source: BFM TV
