There was the European flag, there is now the Delors standard. At the dawn of the French presidency of the Council of the European Union, on January 1, 2022, the star-spangled flag was deployed on several buildings, notably the Arc de Triomphe. Controversy assured, controversy assumed: Marine Le Pen first, then other political leaders reacted strongly – that was the goal, Emmanuel Macron wanted to embody the European against all the others for the presidential election.
Jacques Delors died on December 27, 2023 and Emmanuel Macron only has his name on his lips. A long press release, as is normal for one of the most influential French public figures: “His legacy, more alive than ever, invites us to follow in his footsteps, towards a sovereign and fraternal Europe, resolutely turned towards future.” An evocation, which is extremely rare, in the televised address of December 31. A national tribute ceremony, on January 5 at Les Invalides, in the presence of the President of the Republic.
The Elysée is preparing it with Pascal Lamy, president emeritus of the Jacques Delors institute, whom Emmanuel Macron knew during his time at the finance inspectorate in the early 2000s. And as the story is teasing, Martine Aubry, daughter of the deceased, is the other interlocutor. Her relationship with the president is execrable, and as she has never kept her tongue in her pocket, the exchanges were often violent. When he was at Bercy, she said somewhat pleasantly: “Fed up! I can’t stand his arrogance less and less.” Here he is a candidate for the Elysée in 2017. “He loves money and not people,” she said, warning against “the economic and social regression” that his election would cause. She does not explicitly call for voting for him when the second round pitted him against Marine Le Pen – she had been clearer when it was Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. She continues afterwards his victory. In 2020, she affirms that “inhumanity is at work in all the policies” put in place. During the pension reform, she speaks of a “totally humiliating and pretentious vision”. Friday, she will be alongside Emmanuel Macron in the large courtyard of the Invalides…
Jean-Pierre Jouyet’s phone, on the other hand, remained silent. He too was (with Pascal Lamy) the closest collaborator of Jacques Delors, before sponsoring the entry into the public sphere of Emmanuel Macron and actively acting for his appointment as Minister of the Economy in 2014. The two men have moved away since the election of the new president. In The gallery this Sunday, Jean-Pierre Jouyet disputes any affiliation between the two: “Jacques Delors, it was not at the same time.”
With the European elections approaching, a meeting to which the Head of State gave particular solemnity in his wishes – “You will have to decide next June on the continuation of this rearmament of our European sovereignty in the face of the perils” – the string is thick and therefore solid: to evoke Delors is to follow in the footsteps of a great figure who speaks both to the Europhile electorate and to this left that the recent bill on immigration has been bruised or even revolted.
Jacques Delors? Not know. On September 7, 2017 in Athens, Emmanuel Macron, with the freshness of recently elected presidents, delivered a grandiose ode to Europe, in Athens, not far from the Parthenon. Without ever mentioning the former president of the Brussels commission. He will make up for it with the turn of a sentence in the following speech, delivered at the Sorbonne two weeks later: “No, the common market, the very spirit of Europe, is, as Jacques Delors said, ‘competition that stimulates, cooperation that strengthens and solidarity that unites’.”
Emmanuel Macron is a true European but anything but a delorist. When he walks to the left, in his youth, two figures attract him. That of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, for whom he voted in the 2002 presidential election, which is not the shortest way to arrive at the ideas of Jacques Delors, and whom he met for the first time during his move to the Ministry of the Economy. Then that of Michel Rocard: the herald of the second left met the future president in 2004. Not that of Jacques Delors. It also seems that the two men never crossed paths. It is never too late: on Friday, it is indeed a European of conviction who will pay tribute to a European of construction.
.