The President of the Republic gathered his camp at the Elysée on Monday evening, for a unity speech which caused some skeptics.
“2023 has collectively put you to the test and I am not unaware of it,” Emmanuel Macron conceded in front of the deputies and senators of his camp. The President of the Republic brought together his parliamentarians on Monday January 15 for a champagne aperitif at the Elysée. The opportunity to draw conclusions from a difficult year, marked by pension reform then by the immigration law, before opening a new sequence focused on the European elections. If some participants welcomed a “mobilizing” speech, others came away with doubts.
“Those who thought it would be an act of contrition have been disappointed,” Stéphane Travert, Renaissance MP for Manche and former Minister of Agriculture, told Le Monde. The head of state said he was “proud” of the past year, which nevertheless severely fractured his political family. “He’s a good communicator: a little humor, a winking eye and it goes away,” quipped Bruno Millienne, MoDem MP for Yvelines.
Several participants regretted the lack of direction and concrete announcements in the president’s statements, who saved the real material for his press conference scheduled for Tuesday evening. “We don’t have these kinds of meetings before the announcements!” lamented a guest to BFMTV. According to the latter, “we will discover, tomorrow, like all French people, the announcements on TV. There, it was cuddle therapy ‘we are the best'”.
“There was no direction, we still don’t have a road map,” adds another. “There are several of us who go out and say to ourselves ‘well, it’s like last time’”.
