(Sélestat) Emmanuel Macron assured Wednesday that he “will continue to be on the ground” despite the “anger” that is expressed, ensuring that he “hears” this discontent.
“You have to hear the anger, I’m not deaf to it,” said the head of state as he completed a trip to Sélestat where he was booed several times. “This anger is coming out, I didn’t expect anything else, but it won’t stop me from continuing to move,” he added.
“The logic of the days, weeks and months to come is … that this anger can be expressed in a legitimate way”, but also “that by calming down we continue to move forward”, he said.
While the discontent focused on pension reform, the Head of State repeated: “I assume this reform necessary for the balance and preservation of a pay-as-you-go system”.
Rejecting any “state of mind”, he assured that “the mission of a President of the Republic is neither to be loved, nor not to be loved, it is to try to do well for his country and take action”.
“I am at the service of the French men and women, I will be until the last moments of the mandate they have entrusted to me” whether “in good weather, in rainy weather, whether it is snowing or sale”, assured Mr. Macron who spun the metaphor: “if there must be a lot of wind, a lot of rain, I will do it anyway”.
“When we get to a situation like that we all have a share of the responsibility” and “I have my share, I didn’t manage to convince enough, we didn’t manage to have a minimum of consensus so that there is more pacification.”
But “to say that France would not be a democracy, I think it is an excess of language that increases our difficulties collectively,” he said.
Asked about the advisability of using article 49-3 to pass a text on immigration without a vote, he assured that Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “will work with her ministers so that there is a plan” .
“It is clear that on these subjects, we need to build a majority, I think it is findable,” he added.
