Emmanuel Macron proposed Thursday, September 28 to Corsica “autonomy in the Republic”, warning that this “historic moment” will not take place “without” or “against” the French state. “The status quo would be the failure of us all,” insisted the President of the Republic, coming to close eighteen months of discussions which began after an explosion of island violence in 2022.
“We must move forward and for this we need the entry of Corsica into our Constitution,” he began. Before launching: “Let us have the audacity to build autonomy for Corsica in the Republic”. Speaking in Ajaccio before the Corsican assembly, controlled by the nationalists, Emmanuel Macron said clearly that “it will not be autonomy against the State, nor autonomy without the State”.
Concretely, he gave “six months” to Corsican political groups, from the separatists to the right, to reach an “agreement” with the government leading to a “constitutional and organic text” allowing the status of the island to be modified, text which can then be presented in Paris. The wait was immense on the Isle of Beauty, led by the nationalists for eight years.
“Corsica is holding its breath,” the autonomist president of the Corsican Assembly, Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, told him before this speech that the head of state himself described as a “historic moment.” Underlining the “feeling of immense dispossession” of Corsican youth, she stressed the need for a fight against land speculation, for the recognition of the Corsican people and for the co-officiality of the Corsican language.
“Give more space to the Corsican language”
“With this unprecedented constitutional recognition, I hope that the Corsican language can be better taught and placed at the heart of the life of each Corsican,” replied the Head of State, announcing “a public education service in favor of bilingualism”. “We need to give more space to the Corsican language, both in education and in the public space,” he insisted.
“The status of autonomy that we want is part of the French Republic,” promised Gilles Simeoni, autonomist president of the executive of Corsica, welcoming the head of state. He listed “five issues”: “historical recognition”, “societal”, “economic”, “social” and “democratic, with the refusal of any logic of pressure or mafia drift”.
“Your decision to initiate this process came the day after the fatal attack on Yvan Colonna”, which occurred “in unprecedented conditions and incredible violence which brought Corsica to the brink of generalized conflagration”, said reminded Gilles Simeoni of Emmanuel Macron. Yvan Colonna died in March 2022 after an attack in prison where he was serving a life sentence for the 1998 assassination of Corsican prefect Claude Erignac.
Almost united, the nationalists adopted on July 5 an autonomy project pleading for legislative power in all areas except the sovereign, power which would be entrusted to the assembly of Corsica, in which they occupy three-quarters of the seats. They also want resident status, co-officiality of the Corsican language and the inclusion of the notion of Corsican people in the Constitution.
A second text from the right-wing minority opposition, which calls for a simple “power to adapt” French laws to Corsican specificities, had also been sent to the president. In an interview on Monday with Corse-Matin, Bruno Retailleau, president of the Les Républicains group in the Senate, warned that the demands of the nationalists crossed “red lines”.
Tributes to Corsican resistance fighters
However, the Head of State will need a three-fifths majority, and therefore the Republicans, in Congress (National Assembly and Senate combined) to engrave in stone the Constitution any institutional development of the island. Hence his request, beforehand, for a political agreement on the island between nationalists and the right-wing opposition.
After this political component, the president was to pay tribute during this visit, his fifth to the island since 2017, to the Corsicans resistant on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the island, in 1943. Around noon, at the citadel from Ajaccio, he thus saluted the memory of the Corsican resistance fighter Fred Scamaroni, before going to pay tribute to that of Danielle Casanova, a Corsican communist resistance fighter who died during deportation to Auschwitz.
He will then go to Bastia for an arms test in the presence of military units whose history is linked to the liberation of Corsica. Corsica was the first French territory liberated, on October 4, 1943, thanks to a popular insurrection and the help of French troops from Africa.
