Emmanuel Macron warned French youth against “chaos” and “disunity”, a few weeks after the urban riots, Thursday during his first speech of the new school year, on the occasion of the commemorations of the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the town of Bormes-les-Mimosas.
As every year, the Head of State spoke on the occasion of this ceremony in this city of the Var where the Fort de Brégançon is located, the summer residence of the Presidents of the Republic. In a short speech (13 minutes), Macron paid tribute to the young people who participated in the Provence landings, “ready to die for collective freedom”, before discussing the French youth of 2023.
“There is in our young people an appetite for freedom, an idealism that is sometimes sought. And to which we must respond. Otherwise, sometimes, this noble aspiration turns against itself and undermines the foundations of this nation of freedom, equality and fraternity initiated in 1789,” declared the President of the Republic. “Outside this common field, division and disunity prosper, which paves the way for chaos and injustice,” Macron warned.
“A frenzy of transgression”
The young liberators of 1944 “showed us (that) exercising one’s freedom”, “it is not a frenzy of transgression, it is not a fever to overthrow prohibitions. It is first and foremost a controlled and strong will, capable of assuming the constraints that it chooses, ”also declared the Head of State.
“And this freedom, which exists only because it is always and first of all collective, the rights which follow which are only there because there were first of all duties, it is what we need to feed our younger generations,” he added. The death of Nahel, killed by a police officer during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre, was followed by several nights of urban riots in many cities in France. The Head of State then stressed the need to restore authority in the country, at all levels.
The president made no other allusion to the political situation during this protocol ceremony which has become a must for presidential summers, preceding the resumption of the Council of Ministers by a few days.