Everything turned upside down in twenty-four hours. This Thursday March 12, France enters another world. Since the day before, the soothing professor Jérôme Salomon warned that it was necessary to prepare for an Italian scenario, the rigorous Angela Merkel confessed that "60 to 70%" of the Germans could be contaminated by the coronavirus and Donald Trump stopped brutally the flights between Europe and the United States. At the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron is preparing his evening television intervention. The hour is serious, historic, even more perhaps than at the worst time of the Yellow Vests. "We are entering the irrational, that's why he speaks," deciphers a faithful.
Crazy rumors circulate about his intentions: state of emergency, full powers, general quarantine. "We're in the crazies!" "Belches a macronist. The president, his eye on the news channels, gets annoyed by the self-proclaimed experts who perish on the set. "The irresponsible do not become intelligent with a simple virus", he pings in front of his post. His compass is science. He grew up with medical parents. And there is plenty to do with white hair.
A note of "alert and follow-up" from Professor Alain Bauer circulates on the mailboxes. "We can prepare for a year 2020 entirely marked by the rise in crisis, its increasingly impactful management and a slow process of return to normal," writes this renowned specialist in crisis management. Another summarizes, with a striking image: “We have six to eight weeks before the peak of the epidemic. We are on the ascending ramp of the roller coaster ”.
Postpone the municipal elections? The president of the Senate Gérard Larcher and the tenors of the right are already shouting at the "coup d'état". Macron, who dreads the authoritarian trial, consults scientists before speaking to the French: "What is your recommendation? "It's not going to accelerate the contagion," replied the knowledgeable. The case is folded. "If they had told us it was madness, we would have postponed," swears a relative of the president. Which will set an example this Sunday by fulfilling its electoral duty with his wife in Le Touquet.
In the afternoon, after a fourth restricted defense council in thirteen days around a lunch, he locked himself up with his closest advisers, the secretary general Alexis Kohler and his assistant Anne de Bayser, the strategist Philippe Grangeon and the pen Jonathan Guémas. Macron asks Edouard Philippe, who must cancel his meeting in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) - a heartbreaker - to join them. Until the last minute, we cross out, we debate.
In combat mode
The Palace's golden clocks will soon display 8 p.m. You must give up recording the speech. Go for the direct, without net, with shock measures, between closing schools, massive support for the economy, and for employees who would be threatened. "The social turn that the Yellow Vests did not obtain, the coronavirus had it! Trumpets a pillar of the majority. The only quack, Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer certified all day that the schools would remain open. “The president goes it alone. Understand it, it is in combat mode ", excuses a macronist.
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VIDEO. The full speech by Emmanuel Macron on the Coronavirus pandemic
The idea of a solemn intervention by the Head of State to show that the State firmly holds the bar was sealed eight days earlier, during one of these discreet dinners at the Elysée where we chat Politics. On March 4, discovering the chic but frugal menu on the table set up in the winter garden, certain hungry ministers and figures of the majority twisted their noses. Oysters, nothing to feed her man. The president, who wants to stay sharp in the event, watches his line. "He's a marathon runner. He knows it's something that will last, ”says an advisor.
"It can be very serious, this story"
“We are facing four crises, health, economic, financial and migratory. What do you recommend? ", He begins. In the play, there is unanimity. All urge him to speak to the country as "warlord, protector and father of the Nation," said a minister. “In crisis management, we wait for the word of the chief. Like Sarkozy in 2008, or Hollande with the attacks. This is the Fifth Republic, ”notes a Walker. Dinner ends around 10:30 p.m., earlier than usual. Inveterate night owl, the president has finally disciplined himself, morning meetings oblige. Brigitte Macron, master of clocks, watches over it.
From January 24, Macron understood that France was going to go through a major shock. "It can be very serious, this story," he said, his voice calm, when informed that the first three cases of Chinese tourists who passed through Wuhan were diagnosed in France. You have to prepare but, he repeats, "life must go on".
In the evening, he attended the show by the humorist Alex Lutz at the Folies Bergère as planned. The weekend of February 8 comes to confirm his fears. A first outbreak has been identified in Haute-Savoie. Eleven people, including five Britons on vacation in Contamines-Montjoie, it cannot be invented, were found positive at Covid-19.
Barely arrived in Le Havre to beat the campaign, Edouard Philippe must turn around. From then on, interministerial meetings were linked up in Matignon, around two imperatives: slowing down contagion as much as possible to give the healthcare system time to prepare; and dismiss the measures deemed unnecessary by scientists, even if they were called out loud and clear by opinion or the opposition.
No question, therefore, of restoring borders to prevent the virus from crossing the Alps, as required by Marine Le Pen and LR Eric Ciotti. "To protect yourself, it is better to wash your hands, it is much more effective!" ", Matignon pin. In the closed session, a minister also puts forward the idea of imposing temperature controls at airports, "to reassure, even if it is useless". "Cinema", plague a participant. "We will not do it," sharply dismiss Edouard Philippe and Agnès Buzyn. A simple aspirin before landing would be enough to defeat surveillance.
It is the same philosophy that led at the end of February to the decried decision to maintain the Champions League match between Juventus Turin and Olympique Lyonnais, despite the announced arrival of thousands of Italian supporters in Lyon. "An arbitration of the president, with Gérard Collomb", reveals a witness, doubtful. The city of Turin, said the knowledgeable, is not included in the containment zone then decreed in Italy. What irritates a supporter of the strong method: “They scull to spare opinion. They do not assume authoritarian decisions! "It was making us enter far too early into an anxiety-provoking dramaturgy," confesses a macronist from the first circle.
"Salomon, it will be François Molins" ... "And Véran is Michel Cymes!"
Very quickly, a division of roles was imposed at the top of the State. To the president, the miracle worker who reassures, without concealing anything, on the sidelines of visits to hospitals or retirement homes, in empathy with the French. To Olivier Véran, deputy neurologist bombarded with Health to replace Buzyn, and Jérôme Salomon, infectious disease director general of health, the health announcements of the passages in stage 2 or 3, and the quantified assessments of deaths and contaminations. Two doctors therefore, who will be listened to more than politicians with discredited speech.
This tandem turns out to be a formidable efficiency. By choosing him to head the crisis cell, Edouard Philippe was right: "Salomon, it will be François Molins", the man who spoke on the evenings of the attack. “And Véran, it's Michel Cymes! "Laughs an LREM executive. A crisis com directly inspired by sensitive companies like Areva nuclear, where Edouard Philippe and his chief communicator, Charles Hufnagel, worked. Do not hide anything, be transparent, do not panic, that is their mantra.
Macron and Philippe on the teeth
On the sidelines of the health crisis and its sad procession of victims, the danger also lies in wait for a "braking stroke" of the economy, alerted in meeting the right arm of the Prime Minister, Benoît Ribadeau-Dumas. To block everything would be to throw the country into the abyss. At the Council of Ministers on March 4, the president showed bad humor. "We are not in a situation in which we are going to have to stop the country!" It is necessary to keep, 80% of the infected people do not get sick ”, he gets carried away, already dismissing a postponement of the municipal elections. After the 49-3 drawn the previous weekend on pension reform, this would unleash the opposition. Macron is so annoyed that he brutally cuts off Marlène Schiappa, who has left for a long presentation before the woman's day. "It was her life, her work, she force-fed us! "Swings a minister.
In Matignon too, the walls are shaking these days with the eager step of Edouard Philippe, stretched like a bow. At the majority's breakfast this Tuesday, he paints a grim picture of SMEs threatened with bankruptcy, Airbus and the Saint-Nazaire shipyards, whose orders are threatened.
In a small committee, the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire advocates for the "Canadair principle", intervening massively without waiting. His colleagues Muriel Pénicaud (Work) and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (Cooperation), who multiply crisis meetings with tourism professionals, send the most urgent files to an internal loop. The deficit ? " We do not care ! “, A macronist vituperates.
"They are making jokes with Brigitte, they are laughing!"
If only life continued ... The head of state must deal with a strict "vigilance protocol". His office is forbidden to advisers, his initials cleaned with manic care and handshakes prohibited. With a first case declared to the government, Franck Riester, the virus has crept into the mysteries of power. It was very close: the Minister of Culture was to have lunch this week with Brigitte Macron.
Fortunately, there is humor. He is an important minister, who is heard from his hilarious cabinet: "If you are contaminated, you are locked up in your apartments and the notes are slipped under the door!" At the Elysée Palace, the president is not the last. "They are making jokes with Brigitte, they are laughing! Blow visitors, who are careful not to report too spicy content. Last Friday, the Macron were still at the theater with producer Jean-Marc Dumontet, for the play "Par le bout du nez". The story of a president who encounters some difficulties. Any resemblance…