As the government returned to school this Wednesday, the President of the Republic warned that climate change and the war in Ukraine are “of the order of a major shift or a major upheaval.»
This is a rare enough fact to be underlined. The preliminary remarks of the President of the Republic in this Council of Ministers back to school, Wednesday morning, were filmed and broadcast live on the news channels continuously. The opportunity for Emmanuel Macron, after a few weeks of vacation, to adopt a serious tone. Even alarmist. Faced with the climatic disturbances that France experienced this summer – in particular the succession of fires throughout the territory – and faced with a war in Ukraine which has been going on for six months to the day, the Head of State wanted to call his ministers to order. While sending a message to the French… as well as to the opposition.
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“The moment we are living in may seem to be structured by a series of serious crises”, began by explaining Emmanuel Macron. According to him, “what we are going through is more like a big shift or a big upheaval”. Before analyzing thatwe have been living for several years the end of what could appear as an abundance” of “free cash», «of products», «technologies that seemed to us to be perpetually available“, of “earth or matter» or even «water“. To this rather gloomy observation, the president adds “the end of evidence” and “the end of recklessness” related to the war that continues to rage at the gates of Europe. A speech supposed to mark the opinion and to make react. What the oppositions did not fail to do. Including the left and its main leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
From Châteauneuf-sur-Isère (Drôme), the boss of La France Insoumise considers that“Emmanuel Macron does not realize how hurtful it can be for people.” “He does not realize because for these friends, abundance continues, he does not want us to tax crisis profiteers. People who have accumulated millions, and millions and millions on the back of the Covid crisis, of inflation. So for them the abundance continues“Adds the former candidate for the Élysée. Even if Jean-Luc Mélenchon is slyly indulgent: “I can’t blame him (to Emmanuel Macron, Ed) because I think there is never understood anything (to ecology). He uses words whose meaning he does not measure. There has never been abundance Mr. Macron, there has always been irresponsibility.» “It’s an offbeat message. When we talk about the end of abundance, I think of the millions of unemployed, the millions of precarious people,” for his part, reacted the secretary general of the CGT Philippe Martinez.
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“Four million poorly housed people, eight million French people on food aid… Abundance, for whom? And in any case, when it comes to the Climate, commentary and blabla do not replace action. France is late, and digs the delay, there is the evidence“, mocked on Twitter the National Secretary of EELV Julien Bayou. Guest of BFMTV, the deputy of Paris Sandrine Rousseau thinks, as for her, that the president asks “always sacrifices to the weakest”. “For now, these are just words. We have a President of the Republic who, for years, has been talking about climate change (…). but do not act”, also hammered former presidential environmental leader Yannick Jadot on the same channel. On the side of the Socialist Party, it is Senator David Assouline who rebukes the Head of State as to his “abundance of disconnection”. “He presides over a suffocated country, a majority of citizens who are tightening their belts like never before while big companies are making billions in profits. And its majority votes against the Smic at 1500€ and against the taxation of super profits”, he throws.
“A president who drives our country into the wall»
A few moments after the Elysée host spoke, the right and the RN also seized the ball. The LR deputy for the Alpes-Maritimes Éric Ciotti, also a contender for the presidency of the right-wing party, described the latter as“indecent”. “There is only ‘recklessness’ in France, it is that of a president who leads our country into the wall by refusing the courage of reform and favoring unlimited spending”, adds the elected representative of the South. “No leader in the world believed in the eternal abundance of cash, energy, natural resources. Except in France. For 10 years, Hollande and Macron have had direct responsibility for our dependence: the abandonment of nuclear power and the massive recourse to debt”, also points the finger at the boss of the LR deputies in the Assembly Olivier Marleix.
As for the nationalist right, somewhat surprisingly, few RN personalities reacted. Among the latter, the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot. “The inversion of values at Fresnes prison or the submission of the trip to Algeria should not deceive anyone. An economic winter is coming, the bankruptcy of our rulers is therehopes the one who is running to take over from Marine Le Pen against Jordan Bardella at a party congress to be held next November.