© 2022, L’Obs
The subject of the day was almost the weather. Not that the rain threatened to prevent Emmanuel Macron’s outdoor meeting. But in Marseille, this Saturday afternoon, April 16, it was the blazing sun that was at the center of the discussions upstream. “At lunchtime, he was specifically told to keep it short, with the audience standing in the sun,” says a member of his team. Another assures that said speech will also start earlier than expected, “for reasons of orientation of the sun”.
“But here, we say that we are blessed by the gods when we have such a sun”, tempers the announcer of the day. And it was at 3:25 p.m., just five minutes ahead of the announced time, that Emmanuel Macron finally climbed the stage set up in the middle of the Pharo lawn, in a splendid setting placed under the protection of Our -Dame-de-la-Garde, with a breathtaking view of the Old Port.
Why Macron wants to be the “savior of Marseille”
At the Pharo, the candidate, then president, had already come there last September to announce his “Marseille en grand” plan, endowed with several billion euros to develop schools, transport and security. Because Macron and Marseille are a long partnership, as one of his first supporters, his former Minister of the Interior and regional stage, Christophe Castaner, recalls:
“It’s funny how he likes Marseille. It comes from the victory of OM in 1993. He spends his holidays here, he is almost at home there. He has private roots in Amiens but public roots in Marseille. He has the will to make the city a laboratory. »
The Marseillais do not really give it back to him, however. First, the approximately 2,000 supporters present, some of whom traveled by train from Paris, are far from filling the lawn of the Pharo. But above all, on April 10, they cheerfully placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead in the first round of the presidential election with 31% of the vote, far ahead of Emmanuel Macron (22%), who would also have been left behind by Marine Le Pen ( 20%) if she had been able to count on the votes of Eric Zemmour (11%).
Marine Le Pen “is climate-skeptical”
So, this Saturday, for the outgoing president, the calculation is quickly made. To hope to win in the second round on April 24, he must in a very Macronian “at the same time” flush out the dangers of the National Rally while flirting with the electorate of rebellious France, and particularly the 18-34 year olds. who voted overwhelmingly for his representative.
One theme makes it possible to achieve all of this at once: ecology. This is good, the advisers of the president-candidate had precisely specified that the speech would be centered ecology, ecology, ecology”. On this point, Emmanuel Macron kept his promise. From the outset, he says he heard “this ecological message from the first round of the presidential election, which our youth carries from step to step, from mobilization to mobilization” : “We have to know how to give him prospects for April 24 and the years to come. »
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“On ecology, neither Macron nor Le Pen have a project that meets the challenges”
But first, he would first like to recall the results of his five-year term in this area. “We haven’t done anything in these five years as I hear some people say, he boasts. Notre-Dame-des-Landes, Europa City, Montagne d’Or, Terminal 4 at Roissy, who stopped them because they weren’t ecological, it’s us. » Then to continue on the same register, citing the closure of coal-fired power stations, the energy renovation of housing, the reopening of small railway lines, car leasing or the creation of the crime of ecocide.
“We have been twice as fast as during the two five years that preceded to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, he adds. But as the IPCC recently recommended that we should go “twice as fast again” : “Well you know what? We will do it ! » The small crowd finally reacts enthusiastically. It’s time to move on to her second-round competitor:
“I hear the anxiety that exists in our youth, who are afraid for the future of the planet. I also hear the anxiety of many of our compatriots in the face of these changes which they may consider too difficult to achieve. This anxiety on which the far-right candidate is trying to surf. She is a climate skeptic! »
“Ecological planning”
Promises him that his policy for the next five years “will be ecological or will not be”. Nothing less than that. And “to place ecology at the heart of [son] new political paradigm, he announces that, if he is re-elected, his “The next Prime Minister will be directly responsible for ecological planning, because this concerns all expenditure, all sectors”. “Ecological planning”, a term already borrowed, during a previous trip on March 31 in Charente-Maritimeto a certain Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This Prime Minister would even be “Supported by two strong ministers, the Minister for Energy Planning, whose mission will be to make France the first major nation to get out of oil, gas and coal, and the Minister for Territorial Ecological Planning, whose mission will be to mission to organize with local elected officials the transition in each territory”. An architecture dear to the Macronist MEP Pascal Canfin, often cited to enter a future government.
The candidate Macron also promises the thermal renovation of 700,000 homes per year throughout the next five-year term, as well as to act for the quality of water, air and food. There “the common future” that he proposes, which is none other than the name of the program of the same… Mélenchon. Definitely.
During his trip before the first round in Charente-Maritime, questioned about the borrowing of this expression “ecological planning”, Emmanuel Macron had recognized at the end of his speech:
“You blamed me for stealing from him, he said it before me, it’s true. I pay my royalties. But the comparisons stop there, since he wants to stop nuclear power, and I am totally opposed to this strategy which, in my eyes, reduces our sovereignty. We have a real disagreement, I assume. »
A disagreement much less assumed this Saturday in Marseille. The results of the first round of the presidential election went through there.