If the colored triptych is obviously still the same, blue-white-red, the first color has changed shade: Instead of being cobalt blue, it has become navy blue. For Europe 1, it would be the prefect François Xavier Lauch, the former chief of staff of Emmanuel Macron who now works for Gérald Darmanin, who would be at the origin of this choice. In the book Elysée confidential, it was on the advice of its scenographer Arnaud Jolens, in the summer of 2020 that the Elysée chose this modification.
A return to a more sober blue, that of the Convention in 1794, which was done in all discretion, but one can wonder about the right that a president has to touch one of the national symbols. The France Info site returns to this decision by explaining that the Head of State has the right to modify a national emblem: “It’s part of a number of privileges. In France, the Presidency of the Republic is a kind of republican monarchy“, declared the historian Jean Garrigues to the site of continuous information.
A blue that the Presidency finds more elegant and which moves away from the brighter blue of yesteryear, echoing that of the European flag. It is the former president, the late Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who chose this “flashy” blue forty years ago.