Cod, gourmet coffee and after-retreats on the lunch menu. Cod, gourmet coffee and after-retreats on the evening menu. What to be satiated, this February 7, once the late bedtime comes. The examination of the mother of reforms has just begun in the Assembly and, the same day, in the same restaurant in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, the president of the Renaissance group Aurore Bergé and the secretary general of the party Stéphane Séjourné meet, a few hours apart, half a dozen influential Macronist deputies – some of them the same – to think about what to do next. On the rebound. On relaunch. On the first day of the rest of the quinquennium… Call it what you will: you will never have as much imagination as Emmanuel Macron’s flock to find an exciting little name for this handful of months during which the Head of State ” will absolutely have to set a course and initiate a dynamic”, said a member of the government.
“We are closing this page started in 2017, which aimed to increase the amount of work available, to repair the country; now we are coming to the moment when we have to take on some battles to make it livable for the next thirty years”, summarizes a relative long responsible for setting Macron’s thought to music. Suffice to say that the pressure is commensurate with the challenge: significant. The moment is pivotal, judging by the number of Word documents that the President of the Republic receives on his personal telephone; this kind of moment, like following the Great Debate or post-Covid, where all the circles of its ecosystem kick into gear and saturate the bandwidth. The closest parliamentarians, ministers, former Elysian collaborators, apostles of the first hour, grognards, visitors and evening texters compete for ideas, orientations, in the notes that they transmit to him. “We must avoid two pitfalls: not to mark the occasion, but also to want at all costs to oversell a hypothetical act II which would revolutionize everything, it would be rude”, tempers all the same one of these regular interlocutors, when the deputy Marc Ferracci wants to convince that “reviving does not mean making a 180 degree turn”. But there floats in the air a scent of “big night” watch. We are portrayed as a president determined to reconnect with his spirit of conquest. It remains to know his intentions of battles.
“The weaknesses of the government must absolutely be repaired”
A cast change? If there is one imperative that is no longer a taboo for anyone, including the tenant of the Elysée, it is the overhaul of the government team. A Renaissance executive is enraged to see this list as long as the arm of 42 ministers count in its ranks so many ectoplasms, capable at best of going under the radar, at worst of wading through semolina. It must be said that in recent months, regarding the details of the pension reform, the violins have had some slight problems to agree: “The weaknesses of the government must absolutely be repaired because they become a fragility for Macron himself, grumbles this framework. He chooses weak people and then he is surprised that in the exercise of their functions, they are weak. It is the eternal paradox of this champion of human resources. Better late than never. The supreme HRD has been pouring out – and has been for some time – in front of hand-picked visitors about the shortcomings of his so-called “civil society” ministers, whether they are in Health or Education, too shy to highlight their action and the budgets deployed.
And if “the week of the vote on pensions conditions all the others to come”, as a member of the government affirms by evoking the possible recourse to article 49.3, this also applies to the Prime Minister: the one who had bet everything on his negotiations with the right finds himself up against the wall, his future at Matignon potentially in the hands of a few refractory Republicans. Moreover, for the past few days, Macronie has been buzzing with little whispers reporting that the Elysée would be irritated by Elisabeth Borne and her management of the last negotiations with LR. This would have granted too many concessions for nothing… Some internally see it as the beginnings of an operation “protection of the president” if things were to go wrong. “The ministers are only instruments, the rebound does not go through a reshuffle”, assures a framework of the Renaissance group. It’s true that a good cast doesn’t make a good screenplay. It is indeed a new story that the President of the Republic needs. Immediately.
Because nothing looks less like Emmanuel Macron than the six months that have just passed. Nothing symbolizes its political DNA less than this pension reform, all that is more parametric and managerial. Spirit of 2017, are you there? In his entourage, we try our hand at spiritualism, we light a few candles coupled with several SMS to resuscitate the audacity of yesteryear. The keywords “fight against house arrest” and “emancipation” again point the tip of their noses in the analyzes of those who water it with ideas. The Mormons of the beginnings, whether they are still in the circuit like Stéphane Séjourné, or under the media radars like the prefect Jean-Marie Girier or the ex-adviser Ismaël Emelien, phosphorescent. The notions of equality and protection are erected as a totem: Emmanuel Macron will not be able to do without a big plan for public services, it is estimated on all floors of the ship. “The French feel insecure, it is absolutely central, loose a pure Macronist minister. It goes from education to health through justice, without forgetting, and this is essential, the daily public services . It speaks to people, it’s gold in the bar.”
And then, as often within the cenacle, there are differences of point of view. The priorities of some are not the priorities of others. It all depends on his hobbies or favorite subjects. The reform of institutions, for example: François Bayrou is a fervent believer, Emmanuel Macron shows the going, convinced of its necessity, but the secretary general of the Elysée Alexis Kohler is a tad more lukewarm. “What do you want, Kohler, it’s not the imagination in power,” slips a minister from the ranks of the left. But around him, most agree all the same: it is not the reduction in the number of deputies or the creation of the territorial councilor that will make the crowds rise. Inside the government, there are also questions about the strategic relevance of having the Immigration Bill examined in the coming weeks (at the end of March in the Senate and in June in the Assembly), for fear of failing to do so. to vote, to create conflict within the majority itself and, once again, in the country… That would be a lot.
Greening its five-year term
On the other hand, intense lobbying in favor of an “all-in” on the ecological transition is underway, pushed by ex-collaborators like Ismaël Emelien and several parliamentarians. “There are a number of us who are pressing to make it a priority when leaving pensions”, confides MP Pierre Cazeneuve, former member of Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet at the Elysée. The theme has two significant advantages: to begin the story of a profound change in society, to which it is possible to attach questions of work, training and reindustrialisation; and, since it is a presidential obsession, leave his mark in history as the president who allowed France to be a pioneer and driving force on this subject of the future. With a Prime Minister who is nevertheless in charge of ecological planning, but who has other more urgent fish to fry, and a discreet Christophe Béchu, it is an avalanche of frustration that we are dealing with: “We dealt with the “ecology as we treated immigration: by not wanting to rush, by sparing the goat and the cabbage. Nobody is satisfied with it and that gave us no credit on the subject”, blows another deputy close to the president .
The famous “Marseille speech”, delivered by candidate Macron during the campaign, is one of the rare exhilarating moments highlighted by those who are thinking about the future. But others, like this member of the government, are more cautious, at least on the way to proceed: “This speech was seen as an in-between maneuver. The stake on this question as on other others is: does it come from the flab, or not? It was not the speech of someone who made ecology a second language. The French want sincere and concrete. Our 22 sites France green nation , they have to be done, of course, but who learned anything from it? Not even us! After five minutes at the Council of Ministers, no one was listening…”
This is the challenge for Emmanuel Macron who, falsely absent for several weeks, will return to the French at the end of the month. And beyond his future battle plan, there is at least a double consensus in his entourage, summarized thus by a regular interlocutor: “If he has a secret plan, nobody knows it, and one thing is certain, is that it must not fail.”