To leave in direct contact with the French and the French, after three months of protest sequence in the street against the pension reform, carried out at all costs to its term. Emmanuel Macron will travel to Alsace on Wednesday April 19 at midday, after the Council of Ministers, in order to highlight the reindustrialization efforts led by his government.
Two days after his televised speech intended to initiate a new phase of his five-year term, the president will visit the factory of the company Mathis, specializing in wooden construction, located in the town of Muttersholtz. The Elysée also announced its trip Thursday to a college in Hérault, in order to talk about education.
Hostile reception announced
But, during these two trips, the head of state should again be greeted by hostile demonstrators. Two hours before his arrival in Muttersholtz, the gendarmes have already repelled a few hundred of these demonstrators equipped with saucepans, massed in front of the town hall of the town.
Some carried signs reading “Jupi get out”, an allusion to the nickname “Jupiter” given to the President of the Republic, or “Your 100 days are without us”, while others used horns mist or bells to be heard. The inter-union protesting against the pension reform had invited its supporters on Tuesday to demonstrate loudly against the arrival of the Head of State, to show that “the pension page is far from being turned”.
During Emmanuel Macron’s televised address on Monday evening, rallies and pot concerts had already been organized throughout the country, a sign of a protest that continues despite the validation of the reform by the Constitutional Council last Friday and its promulgation by the Head of State in the night that followed.
Again on Tuesday evening, a private trip by Mr. Macron to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) attracted some 300 demonstrators. But for the macronist camp it is important that the head of state be in contact with the population, at the risk of being heckled. “It’s important” that he travels in the territories, commented the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, on Wednesday, rejoicing that the president “can be on the ground”, “in contact”, to “hear a number [of] claims as well”.
Since the presentation of his pension reform in January, the president has remained in the background at the Elysée and has focused on the diplomatic agenda, chaining international trips, with the exception of two visits, the one in Jarnac (Charente) at the end of February, and one near the lake of Serre-Ponçon (Hautes-Alpes), at the end of March. On this last occasion, he was heckled by demonstrators opposed to raising the retirement age to 64.
Accelerate to reach the milestone of one hundred days
The choice of the company visited on Wednesday by the President of the Republic, which has made full employment, work, reindustrialization and decarbonization of the economy its priorities for its second five-year term, is not a coincidence.
The wood sector is particularly involved in the decarbonization of the building sector. It is “a strategic sector of this reindustrialization of the country supported by the government”, added the Elysée in the press release presenting the trip. It is specified that the company “interv[ies] on several sites for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games” and is “beneficiary of [aid plans] France Relance and France 2030”.
“Acceleration” thus seems to be the key word of the sequence that the Head of State now wants to open. During his address to the French, he gave himself a hundred days to relaunch his second five-year term. Among the priority projects he wants to advance by July 14 are that of a “new pact for life at work” and that of “progress” to be made in public services, such as education or health. .
Thursday, during his trip to the Hérault, devoted to the school, he could take the opportunity to make new announcements about the remuneration of teachers, according to several sources from his camp.
Whatever happens, the executive is showing its willingness to initiate all-out reforms without delay, a task that promises to be very complicated, since the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, has not managed in recent weeks to expand its relative majority in the National Assembly. It must present its new government roadmap, as mandated by Emmanuel Macron, at the next Council of Ministers, next week.
In receiving employers on Tuesday, the Head of State also asked the social partners to negotiate the new pact including work-related measures, which the government sees as a complement to the pension reform, by the end of this year.
