(Paris) “Resolutely optimistic” on health, the economy, its results and the year to come: Emmanuel Macron wished Friday that 2022, “decisive year” is also “the year of exit from the epidemic”, while France records a record 230,000 cases of COVID-19.
“France, despite the hardships, is stronger today than two years ago,” assured the head of state filmed standing in front of the Elysee gardens in a speech of about fifteen minutes.
“The coming weeks will be difficult” because of the Omicron variant, he acknowledged with a rapid flow. But there are “real reasons for hope” thanks to the vaccine. “I appeal to the five million unvaccinated, make this simple gesture […] all of France is counting on you ”. “We will be able to overcome this wave,” he added, promising to “do everything to preserve the activity of the country” and “to avoid taking restrictions that weigh on our freedom”.
Decided not to speak only of COVID-19, he then listed his reforms, “on the run”. “Where we could have postponed everything, we never gave up our collective ambition,” he said. “In recent weeks and months alone, decisions that have been talked about for decades have been and will be made that will change lives.”
He cited among others the “reform of unemployment insurance”, measures of “purchasing power”, “the increase in the salaries of the most modest civil servants,” thermal renovation “.
“Never for 15 years has unemployment been so low,” he insisted.
Another axis of his speech, the beginning in this 1er January of the semester of the French Presidency of the European Union, a key subject for its five-year term and possible theme of a future campaign.
“You can count on my total commitment to make this moment a time of progress for you,” he promised.
As for the presidential election, which will take place in less than four months, he simply said, without revealing whether he would be a candidate, that 2022 would be “a decisive year” because of the presidential and legislative elections. “We will have major choices to make,” he said, recommending “benevolence and tolerance”.
“For my part, whatever my place and the circumstances I will continue to serve you and France, our homeland, no one will know how to uproot my heart”, he concluded, quoting the resistance fighter Marc Bloch, executed by the Gestapo in 1944.
European flag
His speech ended with the image of the European flag projected on the facade of the Élysée Palace, as will be the case on a dozen Parisian buildings, including the Eiffel Tower from Friday, and town halls of major French cities.
A flag which was at the center of the last controversy of 2021. Marine Le Pen said she was “outraged that the French flag has been replaced by that of the European Union under the Arc de Triomphe, above the tomb of Unknown soldier ”, denouncing a“ provocation ”. “The Arc de Triomphe under Macron: after the sacking and packaging, the outrage”, added Eric Zemmour.
“To preside over Europe yes, to erase the French identity no! “, Insisted the candidate LR Valérie Pécresse who” solemnly asks Emmanuel Macron to restore our tricolor next to that of Europe “under the Arc de Triomphe.
The head of state was trying to reassure particularly pessimistic French people, of whom only 17% think that 2022 will be better than 2021, according to an Odoxa poll carried out online on December 21 and 22.
The opposition criticized the last wishes of his five-year term, an “exercise of annual self-satisfaction” which “fails to hide the reality of its poor record”, according to Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate.
“First, a first aid president. And then the speech of the automatic answering machine of the headquarters of LREM ”, lambasted the LFI candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Emmanuel Macron is so disconnected from the realities that he dares to claim that France is stronger after two years of failure of its health management”, denounced for his part Marine Le Pen, regretting that the outgoing Head of State “n ‘not have the courage to announce his candidacy’ for 2022.