Emmanuel Macron, re-elected for a second term, will be officially invested this Saturday, May 7. The ceremony will take place from 11 a.m. at the Elysée. Like the ceremonies of re-elected presidents, such as François Mitterrand in 1988 and Jacques Chirac in 2002, the event will be less spectacular only with the arrival of a new president. Thus, no long red carpet in the courtyard of the Elysée, only a carpet at mid-length, for the guests, nor going up the Champs-Elysées.
The course of the ceremony, fixed for decades, is almost immutable. At 11 a.m., Emmanuel Macron will enter the Salle des Fêtes, the largest and most prestigious room in the Elysée Palace, to the sound of the first movement of Handel’s oboe concerto and under the gaze of the 500 people presentstanding.
François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy among the guests
In the audience, his family, including his wife Bridgethis friends, the members of the government, Jean Castex at the head, as well as the main officials of the assemblies, the constituted and intermediary bodies, the academies, or even the cults.
François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy will also be present, according to information from franceinfo. It’s here first time that former presidents will attend this ceremony. Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe will also be present.
were also invited caregivers, elected officials, athletes or association leaders, an opportunity to “pay homage” to the periods crossed during the first five-year term and to insist on the priorities displayed for the second (health, education, youth, etc.), according to the presidency.
Necklace of the Legion of Honor and cannon shots
The ceremony will begin with the proclamation of the official election results by the President of the Constitutional Council Laurent Fabius, who will thus confirm that Emmanuel Macron obtained 58.55% of the vote against Marine Le Pen (RN).
The president will be presented with the grand collar of the Legion of Honor making him the grand master of this order – which he has already been since his election in 2017. Then he will deliver a speech who “will not be a speech of general policy” but “which will be part of the history of the country and will open up to the future”according to an adviser to the presidency.
At noon, the president will go out into the vast Elysée park to review the troops to the sound of the Marseillaise but also of the piece “Terre et mer” by Bagad de Lann-Bihoué, already played during the five-year term to pay tribute to soldiers killed in operations. As tradition dictates, whose origins date back to the Middle Ages, 21 shots will be fired by the cannons of the Invalides. In the Old Regime, 101 shots were fired to announce the death of a king and enthrone his successor.
This investiture does not mark the start of the new five-year term: it will officially be necessary to wait for the end of the first, on the evening of Friday May 13 at midnight.
The day after the investiture ceremony, on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron will go to the Champs-Elysées to rekindle the flame of the unknown soldier on the occasion of theanniversary of the victory of May 8, 1945. An important media sequence which will continue for the re-elected president with then a speech scheduled for Monday May 9, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg and undoubtedly a trip in stride to Berlin, his first abroad since his re-election.