The Deputy of Rhône, leader of the Republicans in the National Assembly, was Thursday evening in Talant, to talk about the refoundation of his party. He did not spare Emmanuel Macron and was cruel to Marine Le Pen, the National Rally, LFI and he accused the left and the PS of having shifted towards communitarianism.
Our report and a video interview.
The Edmond Michelet room in Talant is not particularly large… So it was not very difficult to fill it on Thursday evening. We counted around 200 people for the visit of Laurent Wauquiez, who came to talk about refoundation. With among the heads of the gondola, Jean-Marie Sermier, from the Jura, or the centrist Senator Anne-Catherine Loisier. Both alongside local parliamentarians. In short, a room won over by the words of the former President of Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, who had just got off the TGV, after a day spent at the National Assembly, which he took great pleasure in reporting on. To better shoot down the National Rally, La France Insoumise, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but also the President of the Republic, accused of having created the current situation.
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François-Xavier Dugourd
After the welcoming words of the Mayor of Talant, it was François Xavier Dugourd who preceded Laurent Wauquiez at the microphone: “The question of refoundation is the transformation of our country, because France is not doing well. A fractured, divided country, in decline. You had to have the courage to take up the torch. Our movement has taken responsibility.
We are under threat of the motion of censure from the extremes. It would be chaos. Because it would be catastrophic. We need politicians who have clear ideas. Laurent demonstrates it to the National Assembly after having demonstrated it in Auvergne Rhône Alpes. We have a boss. With the regions we can compare. Burgundy – Franche-Comté is inconsistency, incompetence, sectarianism. The left!”
Laurent Wauquiez from one subject to another
Pension reform
“This reform is proposed by LFI and the RN. This in a ruined country.
The retirement age is 67 in Italy. 67 in Germany.
The National Rally is the extreme right of the extreme left. They are not defending work, but demagogic proposals. Bardelle had already said that pension reform would not happen immediately. The problem with the RN is their economic program which would ruin France, retirees and those who work.
The state of France and its future
“Yes I’m worried, who can’t be worried. The President has an enormous responsibility. He added a political crisis to a country that was not doing well.
When we have, in France as it is, 44% of sixth grade children who cannot read aloud,
When in our country, a country so wonderful for its land and its agriculture, we are no longer capable of ensuring our food sovereignty.
When with the crazy decisions taken by Edouard Philippe who closed Fessenheim, we lost energy sovereignty, of course France is not doing well.
And when we are at the stage or when we borrow, we are told you are less serious than Greece. Greece, I was a minister alongside Nicolas Sarkozy, it was France that was going to save Greece.
And now, when we left the country and installed Hollande, then Emmanuel Macron, France had a debt that was average for the euro zone. Today we are in the worst countries, we left the country to them for 12 years, we find it, the red lantern of Europe.
How can you not feel humiliated? All of us who love our country, who love the French nation, who are proud of our country, we are now treated worse than Greece, of course we are concerned.
Others want to deepen the crisis, Mélenchon like Marien Le Pen want to undermine France.
The first thing we did was to prevent Mélenchon from coming to power, with Castets who ruined Paris and who was going to ruin France.
Today the main danger for France is LFI.
Marine Le Pen prefers the interest of her party to the interest of France. She shows her true face.
We assume to support Michel Barnier, but I do not condone the 7 years of Macron which have put the country into the wall. We want to help the Prime Minister succeed in a policy of change, a right-wing policy.
Bruno Retailleau embodies what is expected of a Minister of the Interior.
If we have clear ideas, we don't have many things to change.
A ruined country is a ruined country. When the French State draws up its budget it needs 30% borrowing to be able to finance salaries, operations, pay for electricity, which in France is capable of doing that, is there a single household in this room who says ah yes no problem I will be able to finance my family's budget by going every month to ask the bank to lend me 30% of everything I spend.
This is what the French state does. It's not 4% of GDP, it's not 5%… it's 30% of the state budget which is financed by debt and the footprint each year.
And all this has consequences. Because that means that now our country, we are talking about school. In the next two to three years, in France's budget, we will put more money into repaying our loans each year than money into financing our children.
In Auvergne Rhône Alpes, I reduced administrative expenses by 15%. It was easy. There is waste everywhere.
The value of French society is work.
In Switzerland we teach children to respect common rules.
Even for one day you have to go to prison. It is to protect the most vulnerable, our parents, our grandparents.
The second leg: It is recognizing effort, merit and work. We must fight against welfare. I want to keep social work, but stop providing assistance.
At the moment, what is the big debate agitating the Ministry of National Education? their famous courses on sex education and gender theory.
This is the famous debate which is agitating the Ministry of National Education at the moment. I have a few suggestions for them. What if we debated how to learn to read, write and count? That might be a good idea, right? What if we debated how to ensure that trade…
What if we debated, my friends, how to award merit scholarships? France, when you closed your eyes, what was it? It was the former Republic cabinet.
Let's give back merit, with merit scholarships
We need to find a straight line that is visible. The left, which was republican, is today subject to communitarianism and Islamism.”
Immigration
“Today, I want to say things as I mean them. Obviously we must control our immigration.
Obviously we cannot accept that someone who enters our country irregularly is then regularized.
Obviously for me, it makes no sense to say that we allow people who have not even contributed a euro to our health system to be able to benefit from free access to health insurance simply because that it's not fair.
And when we say that, these are not even themes that should be fracturing themes within French public opinion, because the reality is that all French people think the same thing.
Whether they are on the left or on the right. The French left defended assimilation. It was the identity of the left. I defend assimilation today.
Because I am convinced that when we come to a country, it is to integrate into it and respect the values of that country. We allowed communities to settle in and we see in Dijon these fights and these images of pitched battles in which communities confront each other instead of having succeeded in making these communities communities which adhere to the French nation as this was the case in the past for the communities that came to us.
But I'm also going to say things like I think. A foreigner who comes to France to benefit from social assistance and not respect France's rules is a problem.
A Frenchman born in France, who lives on social assistance, who hates France, is also a problem.
And a foreigner who comes to France to work and assimilate is not a problem, because he is someone who will help us, and who will serve as a priest to the forces of our country.
And so what we must defend in our political family is the fact of expressing the value of the French nation, it is work, it is assimilation. It is about adhering to our values and our culture.
And if these rules are ever clear, they will allow us to rediscover what France was capable of integrating in the past, but on rules that were simple, where when we come to a country, well it was the famous adage that said “In Rome, you live like the Romans.” In France, you live like the French.”
Refoundation
“I'm going to ask you to provide me with the field ideas you have. You are all, with your experiences, with your profiles, you can enrich the thinking of our family.
Afterwards, we will choose. And we will choose together how to define our proposals. And we need to find a right that is legible, where people must know, when they take the ballot from our political family, what is in it.
In a political landscape which has become so cacophonous, where you have a left which was republican and which is now subject to the Islamism that Mélenchon proposed as a horizon.
In which there was, as I told you, an extreme right which votes with the extreme left. In which we have confusion due at the same time. Tomorrow the right must be the political family that is clear about its values.
Which allows people to say to themselves, I know where they want to take us. We're going to rebuild everything, we're going to change the name, we're going to change the organization. We're going to put people back together.
We will find pleasure in doing politics together. And then we'll work on how to do it.
If we ever arrive and stay with the same operating framework, it's over. No chance. It doesn't work anymore. In the country, it is no longer the French who speak. You have supreme courts which decide in place of the French. You have independent administrative authorities who decide for you. You have lobbies to which we left very open, with the capitulation of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where Édouard Philippe decided that in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, while there was a referendum, it was the activists Zadists who won and led France to capitulate.
We have to review everything. You have to put everything back the other way. And we would have to devote the 6 million euros to it, because otherwise we won't make it.”
Alain BOLLERY
(Photos Alain BOLLERY)
