Emmanuel Macron is continuing his campaign to seduce the left-wing electorate, this time more specifically on the ecological question.
The candidate president announced a big bang government with a prime minister now responsible for "ecological planning" ... A theme dear to Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
On the merits, the candidate multiplied the very ambitious wow effects but with little or no new announcements and above all never quantified.
In Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhône)
Emmanuel Macron's Marseille meeting, so much announced and postponed before the first round because of the war in Ukraine, finally took place this Saturday, a week before the second round of the presidential election.
The device had nothing to do with the giant meeting at Paris La Défense Arena on April 2.
The candidate president was this time outdoors, in the garden of the Palais du Pharo.
The key: the grandiose setting of a city of Marseilles bathed in sunshine on this Easter weekend.
Nor did the crowds have anything to do with the 30,000 people in Nanterre.
When Emmanuel Macron spoke, shortly before 3:30 p.m., the garden was clearly not full.
The organizers announced 4,200 people, it was a little hard to believe.
On the merits, Emmanuel Macron has continued the strategy he has been leading since the first round: aiming for this third of the votes which went to one of the left-wing candidates on April 10.
He again quoted Jean Jaurès (“It is by going to the sea that the river remains faithful to its source”).
This time, it was on ecological policy that he largely focused his speech: “The policy that I will pursue in the next five years will be ecological or it will not be.
I want to place ecology at the heart of the new political paradigm ”For this, as at La Défense, two weeks ago, he took up, as if not to touch it, leftist slogans.
This time, Emmanuel Macron has, twice, used the expression “future in common”… the name of the program of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, third man in the first round with nearly 22%.
Government big bang
The shadow of the MP for Marseilles hovered over the Pharo this afternoon.
Because Emmanuel Macron seemed to take over the "ecological planning", dear to Jean-Luc Mélenchon for several years.
No doubt the two men do not put the same things behind this expression, but the symbol is there.
Main announcement: an overhaul of the government architecture.
The prime minister will thus be “directly responsible for ecological planning” and “supported by two strong ministers”.
A minister of energy planning whose “mission will be to make France the first major nation to get out of gas, coal and oil”.
And a minister in charge of "territorial ecological planning", who will have to work with the communities to coordinate actions with the communities.
This is not nothing: we remember that in 2007, in the Ecological Pact that Nicolas Hulot had had almost all the presidential candidates of the time sign, he asked for the creation of a post of vice-premier minister responsible for sustainable development.
Either a minister at the very top of the government hierarchy so that he has political weight in the arbitrations.
Emmanuel Macron actually wants to fight against the idea that it is at Matignon that everything is always blocked on environmental subjects.
But will this question of government engineering be enough to mobilize the “climate generation” and the voters who voted for the “green rule” with Jean-Luc Mélenchon on its behalf?
Big ambitions, few commitments
Because on the rest, even if the president displays sometimes spectacular ambitions (“I want to completely rebuild”), few new things.
Few or no substantive announcements, and especially almost never quantified commitments.
Emmanuel Macron of course defended his record: the end of the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, the end of the Charles-de-Gaulle airport expansion project, the halting of the Montagne d gold in Guyana… “Who stopped these projects?
It's us !
".
He also recalled that during the last five years France had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 12%… Forgetting to specify that the very sharp reduction in activity during the confinements had helped a lot.
“Inaction, not at home!
“, Emmanuel Macron still dared, in reference to the condemnation for climate inaction inflicted on the State,
The environmentalist philosophy of the outgoing president indeed remains quite far from that of a Mélenchon or a Jadot.
Macronist ecology will be an incentive: “To succeed in the climate battle, no injunction, no false lessons, but clarity in the objectives.
Macronist ecology is pro-nuclear: “Between gas and coal on the one hand and nuclear on the other, I choose nuclear.
“And then macronist ecology is pro growth and, as in 2017, relies on a certain technological solutionism: “Ecology is not about closing your jobs or your factories.
(…) It is through innovation that we can produce more but in an ecological way.
»
Basically, does he really need to convince on the subject in the context of a second round against Marine Le Pen?
The candidate of the National Rally is so little identified with the theme, the contrast plays full.
Emmanuel Macron therefore had a good time qualifying the “extreme right candidate” as “incompetent” on ecological issues.
For the candidate president, she is even “climatosceptic”.
On this subject as on the others, the candidate denounces the ambient relativism vis-à-vis his opponent: "You have been stuffed in your head (by telling you that the extreme right and me), it was the same thing: no, it's not the same thing," he said, raising his voice.
Emmanuel Macron thus made the second round of the presidential election a referendum: “For or against our youth?
For or against the Republic?….”
And so,
“for or against ecology?
»
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