The mine is dark and preoccupied when Emmanuel Macron picks up his phone to speak with Jean Castex.
From the corner lounge, on the first floor of the Elysee Palace, where his office is located, the president takes another look at the text that his Prime Minister is about to read at a press conference.
The two men agreed to go over it one last time together, for the final modifications.
“One last rehearsal before the big jump,” says a relative.
It is 6:15 p.m., Thursday March 18, France is holding its breath again while the threat of a third reconfinement looms.
The new measurements are expected by 7 p.m.
A year, almost to the day, after the first putting under the cover of the country, here is again the Head of State at the foot of the wall.
The reality is cruel: the third wave is coming, the resuscitation services are saturated and we now hear about a Breton variant… Worse, after a more than sluggish launch in January, its vaccination campaign has experienced a blow during the week. abrupt stop after the suspension of the AstraZeneca.
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So, as the tenant of Matignon sums it up in private: “The shit is cascading.
And Macron, him, must now decide.
Reconfin or not?
The question divides specialists as much as the majority.
He is clearly not in favor of it, “for reasons of national psychology.
If we close everything, he knows that the French are going to blow a rope, "fears a minister who has his ear.
It gives the impression of sailing on sight
He is also aware of the criticisms of his crisis management and the growing anxieties.
“This is the first time that I have noticed a complete dissonance between the actions we are led to take and the way it is perceived.
People are fed up with not having visibility, ”worries an advisor at the heart of the crisis earlier this week.
Internally, questions are even legion.
"We must show that each day spent is a day won, and not lost," alert Tuesday morning Stanislas Guerini, the boss of En Marche, in breakfast for the majority.
Especially since the failures of the AstraZeneca vaccine do not help the general mood or the impression of improvisation.
Jean Castex and Emmanuel Macron had to juggle between health, psychological and economic constraints.
LP / Frédéric Dugit
The coordination and strategy meeting animated Monday afternoon by videoconference around Alexis Kohler, secretary general of the Elysee Palace, and the pundits of the majority was moreover proof of this.
At the same time, Germany announces that it is suspending the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
A participant said: “We are on the phone when suddenly Kohler stops answering.
He was out.
It is rare that he is absent during a meeting.
"When the secretary general resumes the conversation, it's a cold shower:" I just had Olivier (
Editor's note: Véran
) who received the recommendation from the Medicines Agency on the AstraZeneca.
At the moment, Emmanuel Macron is in Montauban, he will speak.
"
A few minutes later, from Tarn-et-Garonne, the president indeed hastily announces that he is in turn suspending the vaccine.
Ironically, the meeting focused on accelerating the vaccine campaign ...
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In private, the Head of State however defends himself against any improvisation: “We have always been pragmatic.
It is this pragmatism that led us not to re-define at the end of January, when some invited us to do so in the face of signs of an announced explosion ... And which ultimately did not take place, he supported Wednesday morning at the Council of health defense.
And it is this same pragmatism that should lead us to additional measures in the territories where there is a particularly worrying situation, in particular in Ile-de-France and in Hauts-de-France.
"
To each minister his solution
The meeting is however tense, each minister fiercely defends his piece of fat.
At the request of the president, Olivier Véran then presents several scenarios, with measures for the weekend or the week in the territories where the wave is the most violent.
Unsurprisingly, he defends a health approach, and rather heavy measures.
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Bruno Le Maire, for his part, exposes that, "for economic reasons", he would only favor the option of a turn of the screw on weekends.
As for Macron, as usual, he listens and doesn't let anything show through.
The meeting is not conclusive.
"It's very open," sums up a minister on leaving.
"We will make the decisions that we must take", however promises the Head of State the same evening, visiting the hospital in Poissy (Yvelines), in the face of exhausted caregivers.
A two - hour meeting, followed by a videoconference with elected officials, which will, in fact, constitute the tipping point ...
Thank you very much to all of our caregivers.
We will be there.
We will continue to take decisions as we have done from the start, pragmatic, proportionate, territorialized, necessary.
To protect our most vulnerable and protect our caregivers.
pic.twitter.com/foxkOmvVBp
- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 17, 2021
Organized at the very last moment, with the support of the various right-wing mayor Karl Olive, whom Macron knows well and whom he appreciates for his outspokenness and his solid network of elected officials, the meeting is indeed an awareness of the ground for the president.
“You don't have doctors here, but magicians, because for a year and a half they haven't stopped for a second.
So we have to listen to them, ”undertakes the mayor upon arriving at the hospital.
Then, during the videoconference, he is questioned about the social distress of people who can no longer stand confinement, curfew, etc.
It promises graduated and territorialized measures.
While at the same time, in Paris, Castex receives the parliamentarians of the Liaison Committee on the crisis.
Among them, Christophe Castaner proposes to adapt the confinement hours to 7 p.m., where the situation has not worsened.
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Confined, really?
Outside life goes on (practically) as before
The boss of the LR group in the Assembly, Damien Abad, believes for his part that confinement at the weekend is not necessarily better accepted than confinement all week.
The Prime Minister takes notes.
But, in the end, no one really knows which way the coin will fall the next day during the press briefing.
Face-to-face with Jean Castex
Everything accelerates Thursday morning, on the occasion of final consultations.
The suspense is at its height when a recording leaked from the day before with local elected officials, and revealed by France Bleu Paris, where the president seems to rule out the track of a reconfinement at the weekend in Ile-de-France.
What to complete to sow the disorder.
Finally, Macron decides at midday, during a one-to-one meeting with his Prime Minister.
No hard confinement for Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France and some departments, but additional “braking measures” for four weeks.
It is there that the formula of “brake without locking up”, pronounced that same evening by Castex, is imagined.
"An idea of the president himself", confides a minister.
And the French, them, are now fixed ... without necessarily seeing more clearly.
