Mont-Saint-Michel, its steps, its abbey, its archangel... and its presidents. This Monday, June 4, Emmanuel Macron will walk the narrow streets of the monument, as did many of his predecessors: from Pompidou to Hollande, via Mitterrand – who came to launch in 1983 the work of de-silting and then in 1988 – and Chirac in 2002, beginning his re-election campaign. Having just been sworn in as a candidate by the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy also went there in January 2007, the first stage of his victory at the Élysée.
Like them, Emmanuel Macron will take advantage of this high heritage site to "celebrate the greatness" of the country. For the millennium of the abbey, he will deliver at the end of the day a "speech on the permanence and resilience of the France in the face of the mastery of the elements, the beautification of nature and the transmission of our History," announces the Elysee. A visit that could also respond to the term "decivilization" recently evoked by the president.
"Mont-Saint-Michel is France's success, what we must preserve and what we must not deconstruct," said former Sarkozy adviser Franck Louvrier. Emmanuel Macron will perhaps seek inspiration in the words of François Mitterrand evoking in the same walls "the eternal and yet always new values, outside of which man knows only malaise, ruins, despair".
After months of protest over pensions, the head of state is still trying to renew the link with the French. "This type of heritage and memorial displacement is more consensual," says Gaspard Gantzer, a former adviser to Hollande. On the eve of a day of mobilization against the reform, Emmanuel Macron continues to want to talk about something else. Always with the same objective: to try to move forward and desensitize his five-year term.