Three police officers aged 24 and 25 were killed Sunday in the North in a collision with a wrong-way vehicle driven by a man heavily drunk and positive for cannabis, himself dead in the accident.

While the debate rises after repeated violence against public officials and elected officials of the Republic, the Head of State will preside over the tribute ceremony that will be paid to them at the National Police Academy of Roubaix at 12:00.

He is due to speak after meeting with the families and colleagues of the victims.

Paul, 25, whose partner is pregnant, Steven, also 25, father of a little boy and Manon, 24, who had studied physiotherapy before choosing the police, will receive the insignia of the Legion of Honor posthumously.

A car involved in an accident that killed four people, including three police officers, on May 21, 2023 near Lille, in the North © Sameer Al-Doumy /

They were carrying in their car a 16-year-old girl victim of an attack, "which illustrates the heart of the mission incumbent on them," said the presidency Wednesday. "An everyday mission where the police intervene to protect the French." The girl was seriously injured in the accident.

Deeper introspection

Emmanuel Macron has upset his agenda to go to this tribute, while the premeditated murder Monday of a nurse of the University Hospital of Reims by a man suffering from schizophrenia and paranoia has also aroused great emotion in the country.

In the wake of a long social and political crisis on the issue of pensions, he called on Wednesday his ministers to "work in depth to counter this process of decivilization".

The term comes from research in sociology but has been taken up by the far right, notably by the writer Renaud Camus, champion of the theory of the "Great Replacement".

But the entourage of the president evokes "a search term that is not preempted by one camp or another".

Its use aims, said this source Thursday to AFP, to "launch the debate of a deeper introspection on the ills of society today".

The resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brévin, Yannick Morez, under the constant pressure and threat of the extreme right, the intimidation suffered by deputies and local elected officials can not be put "on the same level" as the tragedies of Reims and Roubaix, insists the entourage of the head of state because "they do not have the same cause".

"Benevolence"

However, the presidential camp denounces in unison "a society in which violence is effectively exacerbated," in the words Thursday of the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet.

She denounced "people who are completely uninhibited vis-à-vis this violence and it becomes ordinary violence, daily violence".

During questions to the government Wednesday in the Senate, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin did not hesitate to describe as "assassin" the driver of the car that hit the police vehicle.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on May 23 during questions to the government at the Senate in Paris © Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

"Let us question a society in which people who care (...), people who devote their days, their nights, to preserve the health of others are threatened," government spokesman Olivier Véran also said.

At ease in these debates, the right-wing and far-right opposition denounces the laxity of justice and more generally the lack of support for the police.

Speaking of "decivilization", "Emmanuel Macron has once again given us reason," said Marine Le Pen on Thursday, also denouncing police officers "morally disarmed".

The president of the far-right party group Rassemblement National at the National Assembly Marine Le Pen on May 2, 2023 in Paris © Bertrand GUAY / AFP/Archives

"What a failure for a president of the Republic who had in his mouth at the beginning of his first five-year term the word of +benevolence + in society," ironically on franceinfo the leader of the deputies The Republicans Olivier Marleix.

© 2023 AFP