Joachim Le Floch-Imad is director of the Res Publica Foundation and collaborator of Jean-Pierre Chevènement. He is a candidate in the legislative elections in the 4th district of Sarthe, with the support of the presidential majority and of "Refondation republicaine".
The re-election of Emmanuel Macron as President of the Republic must be the starting point of new hope for France.
However, it should not blind us to the problems that plague our country.
Loss by the West of the monopoly of power, return of war on our continent, climate change, health crisis, rising inflation and economic uncertainty about the future, democratic fatigue, identity anxieties: crises are increasing, our society is fractured and geopolitical perils call into question our fundamental values.
We must not add political and institutional instability to these evils.
The State could not maintain itself and France remain governable if the executive saw its action paralyzed.
More than ever,
Beyond the next legislative elections, it is to a whole decomposition of our political system and our democratic life that it will be necessary to put an end.
The sociology of voting attests to this: the left-right divide is dead and France is increasingly polarized.
Against a background of increasing abstention, the popular categories have largely focused on Marine Le Pen.
A minority but not insignificant part of Emmanuel Macron's electorate also voted for him less for his record and for his program than for fear of the economic and political adventurism that the National Rally proposes.
Throughout the campaign, political speech finally came up against the distrust, even indifference, of citizens.
In view of this observation, triumphalism cannot be in order.
Emmanuel Macron's second term will only be a success if it leads to a social and civic compromise capable of interrupting the exacerbation of particularisms and restoring national harmony.
Faced with the rise of resentment and violence, the French people must be given the feeling that they can take their destiny into their own hands.
Faced with the disappearance of the working classes from our collective imagination, it is urgent to open our eyes to their suffering and their anger.
It is not a question of opposing the France of the metropolises to peripheral France, but of ensuring that the first is more at the service of the second and takes charge of its cultural concerns and its material interests.
it leads to a social and civic compromise capable of interrupting the exacerbation of particularisms and restoring national harmony.
Faced with the rise of resentment and violence, the French people must be given the feeling that they can take their destiny into their own hands.
Faced with the disappearance of the working classes from our collective imagination, it is urgent to open our eyes to their suffering and their anger.
It is not a question of opposing the France of the metropolises to peripheral France, but of ensuring that the first is more at the service of the second and takes charge of its cultural concerns and its material interests.
it leads to a social and civic compromise capable of interrupting the exacerbation of particularisms and restoring national harmony.
Faced with the rise of resentment and violence, the French people must be given the feeling that they can take their destiny into their own hands.
Faced with the disappearance of the working classes from our collective imagination, it is urgent to open our eyes to their suffering and their anger.
It is not a question of opposing the France of the metropolises to peripheral France, but of ensuring that the first is more at the service of the second and takes charge of its cultural concerns and its material interests.
we must give back to the French people the feeling that they can take their destiny into their own hands.
Faced with the disappearance of the working classes from our collective imagination, it is urgent to open our eyes to their suffering and their anger.
It is not a question of opposing the France of the metropolises to peripheral France, but of ensuring that the first is more at the service of the second and takes charge of its cultural concerns and its material interests.
we must give back to the French people the feeling that they can take their destiny into their own hands.
Faced with the disappearance of the working classes from our collective imagination, it is urgent to open our eyes to their suffering and their anger.
It is not a question of opposing the France of the metropolises to peripheral France, but of ensuring that the first is more at the service of the second and takes charge of its cultural concerns and its material interests.
Emmanuel Macron laid the foundations for the recovery of our country.
Elected on a resolutely liberal program in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has since demonstrated his agility, his experience and his pragmatism, contrary to caricatures.
Joachim Le Floch-Imad
This national reconciliation must be done from above.
After having disrupted the system of obsolete and interchangeable political parties, Emmanuel Macron laid the foundations for the recovery of our country.
Elected on a resolutely liberal program in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has since demonstrated his agility, his experience and his pragmatism, contrary to caricatures.
The test of power, the shock of reality and crises that were not under its responsibility, led it to develop its software and its objectives in a way consistent with the preservation of the general interest.
It is therefore reasonable to think that Emmanuel Macron is no longer quite the same as in 2017.
While the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have brought to light too many dependencies and weaknesses, Emmanuel Macron first knew how to make the reconquest of our independence a priority, in all areas: industrial, technological, energy, food and health.
As he said in his speech on March 12, 2020:
"There are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market"
.
Contrary to the discourse on the impotence of the State and its necessary adaptation to the neoliberal march of the world, Emmanuel Macron was able to defend planning, the long term of which the strategic State is the guarantor and interventionism: suspension of the criteria of Maastricht, energy transition which makes room for nuclear power, skilful policy of "whatever the cost" to deal with the economic damage of the coronavirus crisis, creation of a High Commission for Planning.
After years of near-stagnation, Emmanuel Macron has also put France back on the path to growth and achieved significant results in the fight against unemployment.
This was thus reduced to 7.4% at the end of 2021 and is, among young people, the lowest for twenty years.
Full employment is now even a conceivable prospect.
The rise in our activity rate, as well as the abolition of housing tax, the increase in the activity bonus or the reduction in income tax, have made it possible to improve the power of purchase by the French, in particular the more modest ones, in recent years.
Data from INSEE and the Treasury testify to this, despite the increase in the weight of constrained expenditure.
Initially built as a business of diluting politics and opening up to international competition, Europe has come to terms with the idea of power.
Joachim Le Floch-Imad
No social state without maintaining our productive forces!
During Emmanuel Macron's first five-year term, France put an end to the hemorrhage in industrial matters.
For the first time in decades, industrial jobs are being created and more factories are being opened than closed.
Thanks to the “
Choose France ” summits
», to the reduction in corporate taxation, to the France Relance and France 2030 plans, a record number of foreign investment projects were recorded in 2021, a sign of the renewed attractiveness of our country.
The productive pact proposed by Emmanuel Macron went hand in hand with improving our capacity for innovation.
Substantial investments have been made: France 2030 plan of 34 billion euros;
future investment program (PIA) 4 of 20 billion euros over 5 years;
substantial increase in the French research budget via the multiannual research programming law 2021-2030.
Thanks to this bet on the future,
This reconstruction of our productive base benefits from the reorientation of European construction.
Initially constructed as a business of diluting politics and opening up to international competition, Europe has come to terms with the idea of power: the ECB's accommodating monetary policy to support growth, suspension of budgetary austerity, filtering of foreign investments, priority to the decarbonization of our activities through the
NextGenerationEU
and Horizon Europe plans, voluntarism in terms of digital sovereignty, beginning of a recovery of the defense effort;
announced revision of the European
Farm to Fork strategy
, etc.
However, new developments still need to see the light of day in order to bring about a new European security architecture.
This is the condition of peace and our independence, in a context of radicalization of the Sino-American rivalry which does not benefit anyone.
A review of the exclusive competences of the EU, a clarification of the powers of the European judge and a refoundation of Europe on a less technical and more democratic basis are also necessary.
Europe will not be built by giving the impression of curtailing the popular will and circumventing the nations that make it up.
On the contrary, it must be more respectful of their constitutional identities and their specificities,
Emmanuel Macron has made the republican requirement his matrix.
Joachim Le Floch-Imad
Finally, Emmanuel Macron has made the republican requirement his matrix: fight for an undeviated conception of secularism;
rejection of the ideologies of deconstruction;
defense of republican universalism against the essentialization of identities;
ongoing doubling of the number of police and gendarmes on the ground to confront the scourge of insecurity;
priority to republican integration against multiculturalism and the abuse of the right of asylum;
the path of an Islam of France against Islamist obscurantism;
back to basics at school and upgrading teachers' salaries.
Throughout the five-year term, several speeches, such as the speech for the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic or the speech of Les Mureaux against Islamism,
It is on the basis of this assessment and this reorientation of objectives that Jean-Pierre Chevènement and "Republican Refoundation", a political movement to which I belong, have decided to support Emmanuel Macron.
We intend, during the coming five-year term, to contribute to the debate and make our voice heard in an open and plural presidential majority.
We intend, on our scale, to offer a perspective that allows each French person to project themselves fervently into a collective future in accordance with the national interest and republican principles.
Let's not give in to the sirens of resentment and the temptation to give up.
France is a great nation and the "French misfortune" is in no way inevitable.
We can, all together, get back on track.
Let's keep in mind the word full of
“Between possible and impossible, two letters and a state of mind!”
