Vacations are over. While the Head of State took advantage of Fort Brégançon, jet-ski and then canoe-kayak outings for two weeks, the back-to-school Council of Ministers is fast approaching on Wednesday August 24. After a summer marked by drought across the country, fires as far away as Brittany, deadly storms in Corsica, the government must learn all the lessons.
“The start of the school year will be very green”, assures one of Emmanuel Macron’s closest advisers. Sunday August 21, a strong symbol was sent as a signal of this ecological return: the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, a friend of the president, let it be known that he intended to regulate private jet flights which shocked this summer. As for the back-to-school seminar, scheduled for the last week of August, the Elysée has already announced that the question of ecological transition will be central there.
The Prime Minister will meet business leaders at the Medef summer school, which takes place from August 29 to 30. The President asked Elisabeth Borne to make a major speech of general mobilization of economic actors. A planning agenda of the measures to be taken and the reforms to be made will also be requested for the fall. Objective: to allow the French to have a clear idea of what will happen in the months and years to come.
As the UK ignites with its “rage strikes” due to runaway inflation, the French government feels itself immune to such social protests. At the top of the state, we are convinced that everything has been done to lower the pressure, “make sure to allow the French to finish the end of the month”, assures a collaborator of the executive. France is doing better than its European neighbors, the rise in energy prices is contained, so is inflation.
“People have megaphones in the Assembly” since Emmanuel Macron lost his majority, says a government source. As he had done at the time of the crisis of “yellow vests” with the great national debate, the president of the Republic hopes to purge doubts and anger as part of his National Council for Refoundation, launched on September 8.
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However, the left-wing opposition, all of whose parties are organizing their summer universities on August 27 and 28, promises a social comeback under high tension: the government is going to put its unemployment insurance reform and the reform of retreats. At the Elysée, we recall that “Emmanuel Macron is not a president who settles, that since the beginning of his first mandate he has a course, that his action is coherent, that he has a method”. His entourage is therefore convinced: the president can approach the start of the school year with serenity.