A tough first date. The candidate of the Popular Union Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the guest of the political program of France 2 “Elysée 2022”, Thursday, February 10. He was interviewed by Léa Salamé and Laurent Guimier, as well as other journalists from the France Télévisions group.
In two and a half hours of sometimes electric exchanges, the deputy of La France insoumise answered questions from journalists and French people on the health crisis, geopolitics, nuclear, nursing homes… He also defended his economic proposals before Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, President of the French Business Movement (Medef). Franceinfo summarizes five highlights of this political evening.
“No more for-profit nursing homes”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon castigated the management of private nursing homes, after the revelations of abuse in nursing homes of the Orpea and Korian group. If elected, “we will no longer earn a euro on a person who is in a state of dependency”, he said, before announcing that he wanted to nationalize all private nursing homes (i.e. 25% of French nursing homes). He specified that their management could be entrusted to associations or cooperatives.
In the Ukrainian crisis, “it is NATO the aggressor”
Geopolitical questions gave rise to tense exchanges between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Maryse Burgot, a senior reporter for France Télévisions. On the tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the presidential candidate believes that “NATO is the aggressor” : “The United States has decided to annex Ukraine into NATO, and Russia feels threatened”. He considers that “France’s interest is not to be aligned” on American positions. “I don’t want the Russians to cross the Ukrainian border and I don’t want the Americans to set up NATO in Ukraine. Not only for reasons that have to do with Russia, but also with us, because I don’t want not that we are turning Europe into a battlefield.“
Exiting nuclear power will be “subject to a referendum”
Nuclear waste: “I have to store it somewhere, free art, not buried”, reacts @JLMelenchon which rejects the Bure landfill project (Meuse) #Elysee2022 pic.twitter.com/xqr2JZLFXv
– Elysee 2022 (@Elysee2022) February 10, 2022
Jean-Luc Mélenchon makes the end of nuclear energy an important point of his energy program, the only theme that separates him, according to him, from the communist candidate Fabien Roussel. But on the set of “Elysée 2022”, he said he was ready to submit this exit to a referendum. “If the French decide they want to stay there [dans le nucléaire]we will stay there. (…) Even if it does not please me, I will apply the details of the French people.”
He later added that phasing out nuclear power would partially resolve the issue of waste management, by stopping “increase inventory”. The Bure underground storage site will be abandoned, replaced by a storage “outdoors”justified according to the candidate by the lack of current alternatives.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is “ready to govern”, according to the boss of Medef (who still has reservations…)
The debate with Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux was an opportunity to confront two radically opposed conceptions of the economy. The president of Medef considered that Jean-Luc Mélenchon was “ready to rule”and that its program “Ain’t Gonna Be Chaos”. However, he warned against taxing profits too heavily. “What’s going to happen? They [les entrepreneurs] will stop hiring, they will stop investing.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced a failure of the labor cost reduction policies advocated by the employers’ union, and defended the role of public procurement in the ecological transition. First orders financed by taking half of the profits made by companies in 2020 and 2021, to “start the machine”.
“The greatest danger is the far right”
Asked about secularism, the candidate repeated his conception of it: “The separation of church and state, period”. “Associations that do not respect the law must be dissolved” whatever their ideology, he added in response to the dissolutions of “Islamist” organizations undertaken by the Minister of the Interior, before explaining that “the priority for me, it will be first to dissolve the far-right organizations.
“Because for the moment those who arm themselves, those who organize themselves, those who make death threats, it’s the extreme right, he hammered. The country’s intelligence services have been warning us for three or four years. This is where the danger lies, because these are people who can commit acts which would then start real fires. I’m not telling you that Islamist terrorism is not a danger (…) I tell you that as we speak, the greatest danger facing us is the far right.”