"You have to take your risk": this is the wise advice that would have been given to him, by the old wise man of politics, Nicolas Sarkozy. By deciding, to everyone's surprise, to start the deconfinement of the country on May 11, starting with the schools - arbitration which makes gloss as much it has been explained that the children would be healthy carriers of the coronavirus -, Emmanuel Macron freed from the constraints and heaviness that weighed on him.
Starting with its own divided scientific council, many of whose members were calling for schools to reopen later, according to the executive. "He finally understood that he couldn't be their puppet!" ", Welcomes a regular at the Elysée Palace, annoyed to have seen him, at the start of the crisis, take refuge behind multiple colleges of experts and delighted with his recent visit to Professor Didier Raoult in Marseille (Bouches-du- Rhône), in the shape of an arm of honor for the "knowledgeable". "If we listen to the scientists, we are in confinement until October and we close the supermarkets!" The remedy would be more serious than the disease, "says a historic macronist.
Listening to politicians more than experts
The return of politicians? Accused of listening too much to the "technos" since the start of his mandate, the head of state this time consulted widely. François Hollande and Sarkozy, his ally François Bayrou, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend. Which would have dissuaded him from embarking on a deconfinement by regions, complex, including for a federal state, because of the need to restore internal borders. Not to mention these "dozens of emails and SMS from all those who want to put their grain of salt," laughs a relative. But in the end, he is the one who decides.
If he arbitrated for May 11, the date chosen "for ten days" according to a faithful, it is to let the hospitals and carers catch their breath and avoid a rush on the beaches during the May bridges. But also because he was aware of properly frightening figures of the heavy health problems left fallow, on which the Minister of Health, the very political Olivier Véran, alerted him. Little does he care if the sky seems to have fallen on the head of the teaching staff, terribly worried, and determined not to play cannon fodder. If Jean-Michel Blanquer has never hidden his desire to reopen schools as soon as possible, in the videoconferences organized these days, "we were talking about the month of June, simply to see the students and reweave links", notes Philippe Vincent. The head of the principals' union (Snpden-Unsa) was "surprised", as many by the date announced.
It is, according to senior officials of the executive, the risk of dropping out of children from disadvantaged families that would have guided this choice of Macron, marked by his recent visit to Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis. "It was important to return before the summer holidays for deeply social reasons," argues the Minister of Education. Again, Macron would have listened to politicians rather than experts, including Blanquer, Véran, as well as faithful like Sibeth Ndiaye (government spokesperson) or Julien Denormandie (Minister responsible for the City and Housing). But also his wife Brigitte, a former French teacher, "very sensitive to this issue of inequality", notes an intimate of the couple.
Others see it as an unacknowledged way of getting parents back to work to kick-start the economy, on the brink of the abyss. "If the school does not start up again, we cannot raise the country," proclaims a regular at the Elysée Palace, in a macronist tirade. A government adviser abounds: "We had to reassure the markets, too." “We know very well that it is not a few weeks without a class that will determine a child's educational success or failure. I am embarrassed: riding on the horse of inequalities to settle the issue of childcare is not pretty, ”saddens the linguist Alain Bentolila, yet reputed to be close to Blanquer. "The school finds itself instrumentalized, under the pretext of the fight against inequalities, in the name of economic necessity", fumes a national education inspector.
Maximum pressure on government
How far will Macron set him free? Behind the scenes, a reflection seems launched to compose a government of "harmony" bringing together personalities of all stripes, at the end of the crisis. "He is reflecting on the means of gathering to mobilize", around "great figures from all walks of life," said a very close. Already, the majority of bookies are whispering the names of potential recruits, such as the former Minister of Ecology, who went to New York, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, or even Manuel Valls, the European Michel Barnier or the socialist Stéphane Le Foll .
Be careful, however, as Macron likes to thwart the forecasts and put his teams under pressure. The more so as the horizon of the after is still distant. Friends of the Prime Minister noted, in fact, that he did not quote Edouard Philippe once on Monday evening, while assigning him the colossal task of drawing up a plan of deconfinement in fifteen days, in "I decide" mode. , it performs. " A ministerial adviser was alarmed: "He put the gun on their temples. For the government, this is a suicide mission! "