"A meeting is used to bring the collective to life and to mobilize": while the "Young people with Macron", renamed "Team Ambiance", had heated the room, supported by the music of a DJ, Hardwell, the current Prime Minister Jean Castex, his predecessor Edouard Philippe, and many figures of Macronie had come to support their candidate, as much threatened by abstentions as the far right.

In front of the huge central stage where he was to speak, Nicolas, a doctor in his thirties, tempers: "Well, it's not a membership vote, but the political debate is so mediocre...".

And for the one who was still an LR candidate in the departmental elections in the Grand-Est six months ago, "Emmanuel Macron is the only one who can lead the country".

Supporters of President-candidate Emmanuel Macron during his first major campaign meeting in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), April 2, 2022 Thomas COEX AFP

"Now he has to get out of this chrysalis of the president", urges this converted walker, who is worried "about the idea that some might have that a presidential election is a tacit renewal": "He has given ideas, I expect others today".

Too soft, this campaign?

"Today is a very strong + go + one week before the first round", wants to reassure Minister Franck Riester, when his colleague Sébastien Lecornu, believes that "this weekend's meetings will be a time when a large part of the electorate will really start to take an interest in the campaign".

Under cover of anonymity, a figure in the campaign nevertheless recognizes "a funny campaign", both threatened by a strong abstention with imprecise consequences and a sounding breakthrough by Marine Le Pen, now within the margin of error in the second round. (53%-47%).

Emmanuel Macron at a meeting in Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre in the Hauts-de-Seine, April 2, 2022 Ludovic MARIN POOL / AFP

"She gives herself an image of change, but the far-right reality remains", insists Franck Riester, who lists the "contradictions" of the leader of the RN, on Europe or pensions.

“For us, there is a requirement of responsibility,” he continues.

Even if it means feeding a gentrification lawsuit, with a project in which only the extension of the legal retirement age seems to have been retained?

"The outgoing head of state must be a pointillist, not an impressionist," defends a relative.

"And then he's the only candidate who has a program!", notes Sophie Tolachides, a 45-year-old Parisian, who came for this first - and probably only - meeting, "because at some point you have to show some enthusiasm, despite what is happening in Ukraine".

"We drew the good lot in 2017", Dominique Boue, but "he should avoid talking about pensions: people only see the purchasing power", warns this septuagenarian who came as a neighbor.

Speak to people's hearts

Why Macron?

"I expect him to continue to reform France, to go further in ecology", pleads Thomas Halberstadt, a 21-year-old student, when a doctor, Laurence Felenbok, European flags in hand, confides that the side "cash "of the Head of State" pleases him: it changes the language of wood".

"He forced the caregivers to get vaccinated, it was good, he has courage" praises another doctor, citing "his charisma, his intelligence".

Before a speech whose strategists promise that he must "put more on deep meaning and speak more to the hearts of people", the former tenor of the Socialist Party Elisabeth Guigou, support of the president-candidate, reassures himself that Emmanuel Macron "has , there, started to really campaign".

President-candidate Emmanuel Macron in a meeting at Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre in the Hauts-de-Seine, April 2, 2022 Ludovic MARIN AFP

The ex-socialist sweeps away any idea of ​​purring and even less a comparison with Lionel Jospin's campaign of twenty years ago, of which she was a linchpin, considered a posteriori serious but boring: "There is no possible parallel”, she decides.

Can the great raout on Saturday afternoon reverse a form of wavering in the countryside, which is reflected in particular by a continuous decline in opinion studies?

"The meetings are important but I never thought they were making an election, and then you can crash it", warned Christophe Castaner an hour before the arrival of Emmanuel Macron, considering that "the campaign is was playing today on its balance sheet and on the dynamics".

In what state of mind did the contender for his re-election approach his great oral?

"Impatient. He is happy, he likes these moments", assures this early walker.

© 2022 AFP