Emmanuel Macron will address the French again, Sunday June 14 at 8 p.m., for the fourth time since the start of the Covid-19 crisis. A little more than a month after the start of deconfinement, the President of the Republic must draw conclusions from the past period and launch a new phase of the quinquennium. From the health situation to the revival of the economy, including demonstrations against police violence, we have selected 10 questions on which the Head of State is expected.
1. Do we have to deconfinate faster?
From the president of the Scientific Council, Jean-François Delfraissy, who recently called in the Journal du Dimanche to let "people live", to that of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, who wants companies to return "very quickly" to an activity normal, more and more voices are rising to demand an acceleration of the rate of deconfinement. All in a context where the company seems to have already the head in the post-Covid, reinforced by increasingly positive figures. Friday, 879 people were in intensive care, against more than 7000 at the height of the crisis. Work, restaurants, schools ... the challenge today is to relax the rules, while it is now established that young people have few serious forms of the disease. But beware, recalls the virologist Bruno Lina, "it is not because the period seems calm that everything is over! It takes a while before the situation is stable. Proof that the virus is still circulating, the number of cases in Meuse and Meurthe-et-Moselle has exceeded the vigilance threshold these days. Since the deconfinement, 218 “clusters” (grouped cases of contamination) have been identified in France.
2. When is children's real return to school?
Fire, the health protocol and its 60 pages? More and more of them are hoping that the Elysée will loosen the noose of the rules of social distancing, which transformed the reopening of schools, on May 11, into a big machine of discontent. According to the latest report, dated June 4, only a quarter (26%) of schoolchildren and 20% of middle school students returned to class, and often on a very part-time basis. A trompe-l'oeil recovery that forces many parents to stay at home to babysit. The Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, does not hide his "wish" to see the barrier of the health protocol fall, in the name of a fight against dropping out of school still far from being won. Several medical authorities, including the president of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy, have also argued in this direction in recent days.
3. Can we avoid an explosion in youth unemployment?
As unemployment figures reach new heights (+ 22.6% in April), how can we prevent young people from being the first victims? Already, the number of registrants at Pôle emploi under the age of 25 has jumped 29% in April, reaching the record of 659,000. The risk is to witness the emergence of a "Covid generation" sacrificed on the altar of the crisis. A "youth plan", in preparation, is to be announced in July by the government. "There will be no generation sacrificed," promised in Le Parisien - Today in France the Secretary of State for Youth, Gabriel Attal. Among the measures announced: a learning component of a billion euros with assistance in hiring and lengthening the duration of research for an apprenticeship contract. The unions are advocating for the extension of the RSA to those under 25 years of age.
4. Will taxes increase?
In three months, France's debt has exploded, going from 100 to 120% of GDP. Who will pay the bill? The French today, as soon as the recovery will allow room for maneuver, hopes the government. For the time being, the majority elected officials argue that negative interest rates make recourse to debt painless. Other elected officials are worried: are we not likely to place the burden on future generations? The government, it assumes the political choice of debt and hammered since the beginning of the crisis that taxes will not increase. "The cuts are not at all called into question," says the general rapporteur of the budget Laurent Saint-Martin. According to him, there is no question of going back on the reduction in income tax, or on the abolition of the housing tax. In short, to reiterate the error made (after the 2008 crisis) of the fiscal shock imposed during the five-year term of François Hollande, who had compromised the recovery. At this stage, any return of the ISF is excluded ... but what about an exceptional contribution from the wealthiest?
5. Finally, great resources for the hospital?
Inaugurated on May 25, the "Ségur de la santé" must restore the health system, whose weaknesses have been shown by the health crisis. The hospital expects a lot from this consultation, which will end in mid-July on proposals for which the extent of the funding is still unknown. The expectations are enormous: increase in caregiver salaries, freezing of bed reductions, governance better shared with doctors, end of budgetary discipline, etc. But other actors also have complaints: city medicine, home care, private sector ... The government has already put its hand in the pocket with the recovery of a third of the debt of hospitals (13 billion euros) and a “Covid” bonus (up to 1,500 euros for nursing staff). Clearly insufficient for the hospital world.
6. Coming soon?
Will the shadow of the great government upheaval hover this Sunday evening? "There will be no reshuffle immediately," swears a close to the head of state. However, the subject has been bothering people for the past few days. “There is a need to breathe new life, to embody a new era. This will legitimately go through changes. So we must not exclude that he still makes a big implication during his intervention, ”we continue. Everything will be a question of interpretation: "If the president quotes Edouard Philippe ten times in his speech, some will see it as a sign that the Prime Minister is comforted." But others will say the exact opposite, thinking that this is proof of an imminent separation, "summarizes a minister.
7. A referendum on ecology?
“The president's ecological ambitions have not been abandoned with the crisis. They are even comforted, "swears the presidential entourage. "After you have stopped half the planet, what can you tell parents who are afraid of the air quality for their children?" ", Had asked the head of state in mid-April in the Financial Times. One week before the end of the work on the Citizens' Climate Convention, Emmanuel Macron could therefore be tempted to lift the veil on his intentions. And why not use a referendum on ecological issues? The idea, put forward before the crisis, is not buried either. "It is even a track on which we are seriously considering, on the basis of the proposals which will have been formulated during the Citizen Convention", we slip at the Ministry of the Ecological Transition.
8. Should the pension reform be relaunched ?
Some hoped for the reform of buried pensions, collateral victim of Covid-19, but Emmanuel Macron does not intend to give up the flagship project of his quinquennium. According to those around him, he is ready to make concessions, but remains fiercely attached to the universal system by "points" and at the end of special regimes. In private, the president "shows himself ready to evolve on budgetary aspects", according to Le Monde. The most controversial tracks from a pivotal age to 64 and the lengthening of the contribution period could therefore again be the subject of debate. A topic all the more burning that the pension system will show a deficit of 30 billion euros in 2020 (against 4 initially), according to estimates by the Pensions Guidance Council.
9. A strong word on racism?
Emmanuel Macron outlined this week in private his vision of the rising identity crisis. First of all, he is anxious not to let the American communitarian model import into our country. He also said he wanted to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the legitimate fight against police violence and, on the other, the defense of racialist or indigenist theses which had no place in France. In his view, the one and indivisible Republic must be preserved. But how? Not by debunking the statues of controversial historical figures: "erasing the traces of history does not settle anything", he confides in a small committee. On the contrary, we must tirelessly continue working with historians and professors to purge the most painful memories, those of slavery and colonization. Emmanuel Macron having not said anything of all this publicly yet, this will be one of the most awaited aspects in his speech.
10. How to restore trust with the police?
It is a French paradox. Polls regularly prove it, the French have for the most part a good opinion of "their" police. But the tidal wave of the George Floyd affair in the United States went through there, coming out of a closet difficult to close the file Adama Traore which incidentally concerns rather the gendarmes ... Remains that the suspicions of racism in the police , supported by nauseating exchanges on some Facebook groups, forced Interior Minister Christophe Castaner to pull up the suspenders of "his cops". Result, he put on the street the unions who consider him "disqualified". The mission is therefore twofold: recreate the link between the police and part of the French, but also try to arbitrate the divorce between the Minister of the Interior and his troops.
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