France: Emmanuel Macron, three years at the Élysée and an epidemic

Text by: RFI Follow

On May 7, 2017, Emmanuel Macron was elected President of the Republic. Three years later, the mood is not to celebrate a birthday at the Élysée. Emmanuel Macron is at the head of a country bruised by an epidemic which has already caused more than 25,000 deaths and which will have to face an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude whose management will determine the end of the quinquennium. The President of the Republic is at the time of choices for the future.

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For Emmanuel Macron, it's a birthday under the sign of the Covid-19. A virus that forced him to freeze France in containment for two months. A radical decision to face an unprecedented danger, analyzes Valérie Gas of the political service of RFI.

The "yellow vests" had forced the head of state to adapt. He said then: "  Nothing will be the same again  ". The coronavirus will force it to try to transform itself. "  Let us know how to reinvent myself, me first  " is the promise he made to the French on April 13 after having said that he was ready to make decisions of "  rupture  " and inviting to think with his "  what that it costs  ”, that the virus had changed its priorities. Perhaps to the point of agreeing to abandon the pension reform so disputed before the epidemic, just to preserve the "  national harmony  " that he calls for to emerge from the crisis.

Change Prime Minister?

Speaking of solidarity and sovereignty, the head of state sketched the outlines of a new model to be built after the deconfinement stage , the organization of which revealed the existence of tensions with Édouard Philippe, a Prime Minister today more appreciated than him according to polls. A situation which after three years and an epidemic, has re-emerged the hypothesis that the time had perhaps come for Emmanuel Macron to decide whether the head of government before the virus could be the one after.

► Read also: Will Edouard Philippe survive the health crisis?

► Also read: the press review with the front page: reviving the country without relaunching the virus ...

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