Macron tries to save time in the face of "yellow vests"

He hears, he listens, he understands. But he stays on course. Faced with the anger of "yellow vests", Emmanuel Macron navigates the meanders of his "complex thinking" to try to find an outlet for the crisis that is taking root in the country. The challenge was large.

Before the "yellow vests", Tuesday's speech was to be devoted to multi-year energy planning (EPP). Faced with the first major wave of contestation of its policy on the streets and on the roundabouts, the President of the Republic has tried to take the height by expanding its purpose well beyond the single carbon tax. From worries about "the end of the world" to those about "the end of the month", there is a chasm that the Head of State has tried to cross.

Thus in one hour he has successively addressed the themes of violence in the demonstrations (to condemn them), new modes of transport, the country's energy policy by 2035, the ecological transition, the closure nuclear power plants, the geopolitics of energy, the role of Europe, the Brexit message, the French malaise and even the legacy of its predecessors. All without saying once the name of "yellow vests" but still announcing three months of decentralized debates on all measures related to the ecological transition. One way to dilute anger by dispersing it locally on local issues.

Debrief: Macron responds to "yellow vests" and announces multi-year energy programming – Watch on Figaro Live

"What I want to make clear to the French, and especially to all those who say, in a way," we hear the President of the Republic, we hear the government, they evoke the end of the world and we are talking about the end of the month "is that we will treat both," explained Emmanuel Macron.

Reforms whose effects are slow to be felt

But no question of backing down on the carbon tax. "The regulars of politics expect from me a renunciation, a dodging […]but it is because we have always acted as we are today in this situation, "warned the head of state from the outset. He just announced the establishment of a mechanism of amortization of fuel prices in the event of a sharp upward change in the price of a barrel of oil. "We can not be Monday for the environment and Tuesday against the increase in fuel prices," he said.

Not enough to calm the anger of the "yellow vests", which, at the end of the intervention of the President of the Republic, ensured that since there was no question of changing course, they too would keep theirs and continue to manifest. According to the OpinionWay poll for RTL, Le Figaro and LCI, 76% of those surveyed believe that the announced measures are insufficient, 78% believe that the government must give up the increase in taxes planned in January and 66% of respondents still support the protest movement. In any case, Emmanuel Macron did not have any illusions about the short-term impact of his remarks to cure the French malaise revealed by the crisis of "yellow vests". "Those who think it is a measure or a speech that solves it are wrong. I do not believe it and it's impossible, "he admitted.

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This discomfort, the head of state had already noted during his great march of 2016 to build his presidential program. And he alluded to it as referring to "those prevented lives of those who work hard every day but who do not earn enough to live well, or those who have worked hard and have a modest retirement." This diagnosis, however, did not prevent the outbreak of the crisis. As if the Head of State was too late to bring the cure after perceiving the evil. "The answers were made at the beginning of the five-year period with the structural reforms of the French economy," says an advisor to the head of state. But the effects are slow to be felt. If the decentralized debates that Emmanuel Macron wishes to organize can contain the discontent, he will have won three months. No more.

Installation of the high council for the climate

Tuesday morning, Emmanuel Macron installed the new High Council for the climate, chaired by French-Canadian climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré. But a dozen bodies already advise the government on energy, climate or ecological transition. There is therefore a great risk that this high council will become an yet another Theodule commission, which will tell the government that it is going out of its way, which is the case now, without imposing any changes on it!

Composed of 13 experts (the scientist Valérie Mbadon-Delmotte, the political scientist Laurence Tubiana, the economist Katheline Schubert or Pascal Canfin, general director of the NGO WWF France), the high council must "bring independent lighting" to the government " in terms of climate ". It "lacks a representative of local communities and a senior military," says Nadir Saïfi, president of the NGO Ecology Without Borders, because of solutions already implemented by communities and geostrategic challenges related to climate. Nevertheless, the High Council will judge the trajectory of France in relation to its CO2 reduction objectives and the "economic and social sustainability of these actions". This is already the role of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council. In addition, the National Council for Ecological Transition is consulted on draft laws on the environment, energy, sustainable development and the low carbon strategy.