Paris (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron affirms, in an interview with L'Express broadcast on Wednesday, his ambition to "reconcile" the French, "not only by words" but by "action", relying on "patriots and Europeans" who "are driven by the will to undertake".

"I do not admit defeated first because in the position I am in, I have no right to do so," said the head of state in this river interview that the weekly began to publish on Tuesday .

Stressing that "many divisions anchored for a long time" have "revealed themselves" since the beginning of his five-year term, with the movement of "yellow vests" in particular, he affirms that "reconciliation cannot be decreed".

"But the fight which is mine does not consist in trying to reconcile by having soft words. The French know that it is not only words which will reconcile them, but the action", he adds.

For this, he puts forward a new slogan: "We, French", which is "a principle of action, at the same time a narrative, historical and cultural identity".

In this interview, which does not include any announcement of new measures, Emmanuel Macron believes that "the camp of defeat, of the corporatists, of the selfish has always been very strong in the country" and that "those who want to take up the gauntlet, who believe in greatness, have never been the majority ".

For him, "many intellectuals have not been able to think of a French future" while "the economic elite has globalized", "has nomadized" and "has become out of nowhere".

"But the world is changing" and "there are more and more patriots. Patriots and Europeans, who are driven by the desire to create, to undertake, to take risks for our country and our continent in order to build a common future" , he congratulates himself.

Returning to the troubled demonstrations of recent months, the Head of State denounces "sometimes unprecedented street violence" because "an extreme right movement has resurfaced and even more an extreme left movement which advocates anti-capitalist violence, anti-police, with a structured, ideologized discourse, which is nothing other than a discourse of destruction of republican institutions ".

"It is very serious because democracy and the Republic hold only as long as there is in the democratic debate the end of violence", he adds.

Without naming names, Emmanuel Macron says he is "struck by this kind of intellectual molasses which at the same time denounces any form of authority, the defense of the republican order, justifies street violence without ever questioning him and never comes not to the aid of the defense of freedom of expression and our fundamental principles when they are threatened ".

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