Paris (AFP)

President Emmanuel Macron will visit Marseille soon, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on BFMTV on Tuesday, without confirming a date for the moment.

"Yes, a trip is planned to Marseille. If he travels to Marseille, the President of the Republic, it is not for nothing, it is even to talk about many subjects because Marseille, obviously, needs qu 'we are working on a lot of subjects,' replied Mr. Attal to a question from Jean-Jacques Bourdin.

Asked Monday, also on BFMTV, on an upcoming visit by the Head of State to the city, the socialist mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan had mentioned the fact that Emmanuel Macron was going to make "a number of announcements". "We will probably do them together," he added, stressing that the president, whom he had met in March, had "a clear vision" of the projects to be carried out in Marseille.

"There is the school building site, it is eminently important (...) and there is also urban renewal, there are sports facilities, there are cultural facilities, there are educational facilities, and there is all the work that we need to do around all this fabric that has disintegrated in Marseille (…), it is a site which greatly exceeds the capacities of a municipality ", underlined the elected.

In connection with the State, Marseille is notably planning a renovation plan for 200 of the city's 472 schools, according to Benoît Payan, who also met Prime Minister Jean Castex on this subject in June.

The mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, January 7, 2021 in Marseille Christophe SIMON AFP / Archives

The announcement of the head of state's next trip comes as the city has experienced an acceleration in the number of settlements for two months, with gunshot homicides in cities and neighborhoods affected by drug trafficking.

This weekend, four days after the death of a 14-year-old near a drug outlet, three men were killed.

Marseille is also due to host from September 3 to 11 the World Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), to which Emmanuel Macron had announced that he would go.

On the Covid-19 front, Marseille hospitals alerted Monday to the risk of saturation in intensive care and the lack of staff, due to a record attendance in emergencies linked to the 4th wave of the epidemic.

© 2021 AFP