Before talking about the last vows, let’s talk about the vows at all! An irregular exercise under the Fourth Republic, most often on the radio, and through the President of the Council, an exercise that has become traditional since General de Gaulle on December 31, 1960: “French, French. On our behalf to all of us, I wish France a happy new year. I do so with complete confidence, not that 1961 should be a year without a hardship, on the contrary, nothing announces that it will happen in peace, but if the universe is troubled, France is not. ‘to be useful to men and to peace. ”
Very formatted exercise, almost always from the Élysée – except François Mitterrand from Strasbourg on December 31, 1988 to signify his European attachment – vows pronounced for a long time sitting but sometimes standing, with or without The Marseillaise before and after. If it was General de Gaulle who launched this tradition, it is not by chance, it is that these wishes correspond to the spirit of the Fifth Republic, Gaullian Republic if there is one in which the president is supposed to be above the parties, to be the bearer of the national interest, and therefore the one who can tell the French, without a partisan spirit, the path covered in the past year and the path to be covered in the year to come.
Basically, in a few minutes, the President of the Republic delivers a mini-speech on the State of the Union in the image of the President of the United States. The last wishes of a mandate are always very atypical wishes. The President-in-Office sometimes knows, but rarely, that these are indeed his last wishes. This is the case of François Hollande who on December 31, 2016 has already announced that he will not run or François Mitterrand who on December 31, 1994 is preparing to leave the Elysee Palace after 14 years in power. In these cases, the emotion is never far away. There is also the president who is totally unaware that he is starting his last months at the Élysée whether it is General de Gaulle on December 31, 1968, more tragically, Georges Pompidou, on December 31, 1973, and those who, perhaps like Emmanuel Macron, even if they have not announced it, hope to open the voice to their re-election, it works like Jacques Chirac on December 31, 2001 or François Mitterrand on December 31, 1987; or it doesn’t work like Valéry Giscard d’Estaing on December 31, 1980 or Nicolas Sarkozy on December 31, 2006.