Bormes-les-Mimosas (France) (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron on Monday called on the French to be vigilant "in the face of a virus which is re-accelerating" and "for unity", drawing a parallel with the spirit that led to the liberation of France 76 years ago.

"At a time when our country, like many others, is going through an unprecedented crisis, the health crisis requires that we all protect each other, that we are each responsible for all", declared the Head of State while participating , as every year for three years, at the anniversary ceremony of the liberation of Bormes-les-Mimosas (Var), the town in which the fort of Brégançon is located, the property of the State where he spends his holidays.

"We will have, in the coming weeks, to continue to face a health crisis which takes a different form; the virus is accelerating, so we need a lot of vigilance," he added at the end of the ceremony. "We must redouble our attention to vulnerable people (...), but without isolating them", he said.

During his address to elected officials and veterans, he highlighted the analogies between the current situation and that which led to the Allied landings in Provence in August 1944 and the victory over the Nazis.

He praised in particular this "unity, this ability to act together, to give of his time" which the fighters of that time but also "the country" have shown since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.

"This is what we will have to continue to take up in the weeks and months to come, in the face of the resumption of the epidemic, in the face of economic and social difficulties, in the face of the international crises that our country will inevitably" have to face, " he added.

"We live in a Republic, magnificent (...) It is generous, it is protective. It gives many more rights than in so many other countries and we forget it so often. But before rights, there are homework, ”he insisted.

Emmanuel Macron must stay until the end of the week at Fort Brégançon, where he will receive German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday before returning to the Elysee Palace, where he will chair on Monday the back-to-school council during which the plan will be presented. stimulus.

During his speech, Emmanuel Macron briefly returned to the memorial controversy that erupted at the beginning of the summer after the death of George Floyd, a black man, during a violent police arrest in the United States. Anti-racist activists then attacked monuments and statues linked to colonial history or to the slave trade.

"Our history is a block," said the president. "We are still learning, our historians continue to reveal the truth, to better understand, historiography continues on its way. But let's not try to debunk statues and erase names".

"That is not the French nation. It is not more that the Republic, which would consist in reading our past with the eyes of today, in confusing the fights", he added.

He then insisted on the role played in the Landings in Provence and the liberation of France by the "fighters from both shores of the Mediterranean", by "these soldiers from Africa".

© 2020 AFP