Emmanuel Macron had to postpone his state visit to Germany due to the riots in France, a symbolic blow at the time of opening a “new Franco-German chapter” and after having already canceled in the spring the visit of King Charles III to Paris due to social unrest.
The decision was announced on Saturday by the two close allies after a telephone conversation between the French president and his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the eve of the start of this visit which was to last until Tuesday.
Emmanuel Macron “requested the postponement”, announced the German presidency in its press release. “Given the internal situation, the President of the Republic has indicated that he wishes to be able to stay in France for the next few days”, confirmed the Elysée to AFP.
No new date has been set at this stage, said the entourage of the French head of state.
The German president said he “regrets the cancellation” but “fully understands it because of the situation”, which he “is following very carefully”.
“He hopes that the violence in the streets will stop soon and that social peace can once again be restored,” add his services.
Sources on the French side had suggested that the fate of the visit would depend on the climate of the night from Friday to Saturday, but the authorities assure that the violence was of a “less intensity” than the previous night. But the scenes of looting and destruction have further multiplied across the country, four days after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager killed Tuesday at close range by a police officer during a traffic check.
Emmanuel Macron had been forced to manage much of the start of this new crisis from a distance, first in Marseille where he was from Monday to Wednesday, then from Brussels where he attended a European summit on Thursday and Friday before shorten his presence.
One year before the Paris Olympics, the images of urban violence, which are going around the world, are a blow to the French coat of arms, still tarnished by the postponement of this state visit. Especially since at the end of March, it was the British sovereign who had decided to postpone his own state visit to France indefinitely when, already, incidents were punctuating the social protest against the pension reform wanted by Emmanuel Macron.
The arrival of Charles III could be rescheduled in October.
According to the initial program for Germany, Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his wife, was to arrive Sunday evening in Stuttgart, in the south-west of the country. Monday was scheduled for the official welcome by President Steinmeier at Ludwigsburg Castle, before a visit to Berlin and finally, on Tuesday, a stopover in Dresden, in the former East Germany.
On the French side, we are trying to minimize the postponement, stressing that French and German officials have many opportunities to meet, and that such a very formal visit was above all a way of celebrating Franco-German friendship, more than a strictly political meeting.
A sign of its symbolic importance, it was nevertheless the first state visit reserved by Berlin for a French president since 2000, and it was to, with all its pageantry, contribute to reuniting the Franco-German duo after the multiple frictions of the last months.
The Elysée thus explained this week that Emmanuel Macron’s “wandering” through Germany was to make it possible to “take the height”, celebrate “the value of our common history” and “envision the future together” in a “new chapter”.
Multiple tensions have recently tarnished the friendship between the two neighbours, from nuclear power to CO2 emissions from cars, through relations with Washington and the conception of a European defense which has once again become a hot topic since the invasion Russian from Ukraine.
07/01/2023 16:59:03 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
