Emmanuel Macron delivered the traditional New Year’s greetings on Sunday December 31 during an official speech. What are the reactions from the different political sides?
Emmanuel Macron expressed his wishes for 2024 during an official speech on Sunday December 31. The President of the Republic delivered a 13-minute speech from the Élysée gardens. He wished for a “year of determination, efficiency and results”. Posted in front of the flags of the Olympic nations, they discussed the upcoming Paris Olympics and the need to belong to a “stronger Europe”. After addressing the various ongoing conflicts and the European Parliament elections, Emmanuel Macron assured that we would have to choose between “affirming the strength of our liberal democracies or giving in to the lies which sow chaos”.
While a possible reshuffle looms over the government at the start of the year, the president thanked “the Prime Minister and her government” after saying “take responsibility” for “unpopular” reforms such as pension reform. In 2024, Emmanuel Macron also wants to focus on schools “in order to restore the level of our students, the authority of our teachers, the strength of our secular and republican teaching”. He promised a “civic rearmament” after “economic rearmament” and “the rearmament of the State and our public services”.
Bitter reactions
Immediately after the end of his greetings speech, reactions from different political sides erupted. “We counted on wishes, we received curses,” wrote the leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on X (formerly Twitter). Before promising that “another France is possible”. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), also deplored an intervention “where the grandiloquence of the verb seeks to mask the absence of perspectives”. “The verb act only serves to erode the rights of the French, continued Olivier Faure. Rearmament is just a sales pitch when our public services are abandoned. Let’s change!”, he continued. The communist Fabien Roussel denounced a president who remains “idle in the face of inflation” and who “clearly lives in another dimension”. Also on “The President of the Republic, as a greeting to the French, rubs salt in the wound of his anti-social reforms and his ecological denial,” she continues.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen declared that the president’s wishes were “like a French flag lost in a soulless setting” and concluded: “can’t wait for June 9!”, in reference to his will to score big in the European elections this summer. In the ranks of the majority, on the contrary, the reactions were positive as expected: “the President of the Republic is right to recall that it is time to bring back authority wherever it is lacking”, judged Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship and the City. Gabriel Attal, Minister of National Education, praised a “determined and constant” president.