“”Because it’s our project”, it marked us all”. Marie Mouffokes, 17 years old in 2016, will “forever” remember the fiery speech of Emmanuel Macron, on December 10 of this year, Porte de Versailles in Paris. We remember the candidate, arms stretched skyward or pointing finger in front of him, screaming in front of more than 10,000 people “What I want is for you, everywhere, to make it win, because it’s our project! »
“This meeting is very representative of the atmosphere of this campaign, she recalls. There was an incredible fervor, and it was very young. In addition, almost at all the meetings, I went on stage at the end to sing The Marseillaise alongside Emmanuel Macron. I was really in the heart, and when you are 17, it leaves memories for life. »
“A bottom-up campaign”
Was this meeting at the Porte de Versailles the moment that rocked Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in 2017? “It was an ascending campaign, and there were several significant moments, nuance the deputy Sacha Houlié, who had just launched Young people with Macron in Vienna: there was the big march, the Mutuality meeting, then that of the Porte de Versailles which recorded that we were capable of making huge gatherings… But we really started to believe in it at the meeting in Lyon in February 2017. There we said to ourselves that we were going to win. »
However, it was not a foregone conclusion. Mélissa Karaca, now Youth Coordinator with Macron in New Aquitaine, and at the Bordeaux law school at the time, remembers the thoughts she got from her student friends. “At the start, I was told: ‘But you’re not going to support Macron, anyway? He was labeled as the future “President of the rich”, while for me, it was his positions on equal opportunity that convinced me. There were some tensions, even if in Bordeaux, things were going well, we weren’t in hostile territory either and I didn’t take any leaflets in the face. »
Hugo Libournel joined En Marche in December 2016, at the age of 17, when he was in high school in Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). He especially remembers the questions about “the absence of a political party behind the candidate”. “Many asked us if it was really worth it to vote for him, if in the end he did not obtain any representation at the end of the legislative elections. That changed today. »
“From the moment I signed up, I was fully committed”
Most of these young people were already immersed in a politicized context at the time of their engagement for Emmanuel Macron. Marie Mouffokes’ father was an adviser to Maxime Bonnot, ex-mayor of La Rochelle (Charente-Maritime), a socialist stronghold. “At the table, we talked politics, and every summer, I went to summer universities in La Rochelle. “She switched to Emmanuel Macron because” of his positions on youth, that spoke to me. »
At Hugo Libournel, we talked a lot about politics at home too. “The debate could even be sometimes muscular”. Before creating Les Jeunes with Macron, Sacha Houlié had joined the young socialists from the age of 17.
Only Mélissa Karaca got involved in politics at the same time as she joined Emmanuel Macron. “I was not at all involved in politics, but from the moment I registered, I was fully committed. I started in the field, then I took on responsibilities within the movement. »
This year, “we are all a little frustrated”
All four are still on the front line for this new campaign. Even if it has nothing to do with that of 2017. “We had campaigned for a year, there we will campaign for a month, summarizes Sacha Houlié. We were in the conquest in 2017, when there we have a record to defend. “The context, the war in Ukraine, the health crisis, is very special this year, adds Marie Mouffokes. In addition to that, he is an outgoing president, he is no longer the outsider of 2017. We are therefore forced to rethink our way of campaigning. »
“In 2017, it was less well organized than this year, points out Hugo Libounel. We were only two among Les Jeunes avec Macron on the Basque coast, when we were in our twenties this time. »
But it is clear that they will not find the fervor of the meetings of the previous campaign. “We are all impatiently awaiting that of April 2, to have some sensations that remind us of 2017, positive Marie Mouffokes. But, yes, we are all a little frustrated not to be able to experience this fully. »