For his eighth wish since his arrival at the Élysée in 2017, Emmanuel Macron wanted to innovate last night, by beginning his speech with a video retracing the significant events and successes of the year 2024: 80 years of the Liberation, a law establishing in the Constitution the guaranteed freedom of women to resort to abortion, Olympic and Paralympic Games, reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris…”We have proven “that impossible was not French”, he said in the background of the soundtrack of the Olympic Games. “Tomorrow, let us keep the best of what we were in 2024: united, determined, united. We succeeded because we were together.”
In a sober and blurred setting, the President of the Republic then outlined a first mea culpa on the dissolution of the National Assembly on June 9. “I must recognize that the dissolution has for the moment brought more divisions to the Assembly than solutions for the French. Lucidity and humility require us to recognize that at this time, this decision has produced more instability than of serenity and I take my full share of it,” declared the Head of State.
Calling for a “collective recovery” in 2025 to allow “stability” and lead to “good compromises to make the right decisions”, Emmanuel Macron, deprived of a majority in the National Assembly, then refocused on his prerogatives, the international, calling on Europeans to put an end to naivety and to “awaken” to “laws” which are “dictated by others”.
Above all, and this is the announcement of the evening: at the turn of a mysterious phrase – “Our economy, our democracy, our security, our children…” – Emmanuel Macron made it known that in 2025 he would ask the French to ” decide some of these decisive issues. By the referendum, a “Gaullist tool” used nine times under the Fifth Republic, or through the organization of citizen consultations? The Head of State is not saying more for the moment but those around him confirm that if the word “referendum” was not uttered, that is what the Head of State would be thinking of. A way of giving a glimpse of the votes mentioned, but never organized since his arrival at the Elysée in 2017, and of putting himself back at the center of the game after a year 2024 that he wanted to be synonymous with the “rearmament” of France and that he ended up as politically disarmed by the dissolution.
In the opposition, many voices were immediately raised. “In 2025, Macron discovers democracy. Everything happens!”, quipped the national secretary of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel about X. “After stubbornly refusing the referendum on pension reform, Macron plans to consult the French. We have no shortage of ideas to submit to him,” he continued. “Let it start with the referendum on pensions,” responded environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau on franceinfo. “Unfortunately, I fear that this will be yet another announcement effect,” declared for his part RN deputy Franck Allisio. “The president has never had recourse to a referendum for seven years and it is now that he finds himself in cohabitation that he is going to propose a referendum. But on what?” he asked.
So what do you think of the wishes made by Emmanuel Macron? What political assessment do you draw from the year 2024? In your opinion, what could a referendum be about, for which the head of state has opened the way? According to a latest BVA survey, purchasing power remains the number 1 priority of the French on which they want the government to act, ahead of health which is now almost on par with debt.
The experts:
– ÉRIC FOTTORINO – Writer – Co-founder of Zadig and The 1 Weekly
– NATHALIE SCHUCK – Grand reporter – The Point
– NATHALIE MAURET – Political reporter – Ebra regional press group
– BRICE TEINTURIER – Deputy Managing Director – Ipsos polling institute
