Emmanuel Macron announces national mourning Monday December 23, what does it consist of

MAYOTTE – After the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido in Mayotte, Emmanuel Macron announced at the start of the week that he would decree “a national mourning”which had been ardently requested by the Socialist Party. Three days later, the President of the Republic kept his promise, since he announced this Thursday, December 19 that this national mourning will take place on Monday, December 23.

“We all share the pain of the Mahorais”said the head of state on X. “Our flags will be at half-mast. All French people will be invited to worship at 11:00 a.m. » this Monday, he added from the French archipelago in the Indian Ocean where he is.

This will be the first time, under the Fifth Republic, that a climatic event has been commemorated in this way. But this will not be the first national mourning in France since 1958. Over the last 66 years, there have already been nine periods of national mourning. Before that, there had been only four, the first of which was in 1930.

Until 2015, this tribute by the Nation to the victims of a significant event or after the death of a President of the Republic took place over one day. But after the attacks of November 13 in Paris, François Hollande declared three days of national mourning (from November 15 to 17). He did the same the following year after the attack in Nice on July 14 (July 16 to 18).

The very first national mourning in 1930, a climatic event

Decided by a decree signed by the President of the Republic, these periods of national mourning have no particular ceremony, but take the form of a simple symbolic time of contemplation. Most of the time, they take the form of minutes of silence in public service establishments and flags are systematically lowered to half-mast on public buildings and edifices.

The two most recent days of national mourning concern the death of two former heads of state: September 30, 2019 after that of Jacques Chirac, and December 9, 2020 after that of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

The two other remaining national mournings of the 21st century took place on January 8, 2015, the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, and September 14, 2001, three days after the September 11 attacks in the United States. This is the only time that national mourning has been declared after an event outside France.

On March 9, 1930, the very first national mourning had, as an echo of that of 2024, concerned a climatic event: the massive flooding of several departments in the southwest, which, for four days, had caused hundreds of deaths and destruction. thousands of houses and tens of kilometers of roads and railways.

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