Pensions, purchasing power, health: Emmanuel Macron spoke at length with residents during a surprise stop on a market Thursday in Dole (Jura) while his opponents were waiting for him further, in the Doubs, for a dedicated trip to the abolition of slavery.
The Head of State, welcomed at each field visit by a concert of pots and whistles since the adoption of the pension reform, was able to show this time that he could also go without a hitch in contact with the French, even whether some exchanges were lively and direct.
"I go into contact. Why? To hear the difficulties of the French. To have new ideas, to feel what is understood, what is not understood", he said in front of passers-by.
"And also to be able to deal with anger, but to do it in an artificially unorganized way", he justified himself, judging "useless" the trips "where everything is arranged because it's going too well and those where everything is fixed because it's going too badly".
The rise in prices, the difficult end of the month, the small retirements dominated the exchanges, with sometimes also more personal spikes.
"Everything is expensive. There are people who are starving," a passer-by told him, adding: "company car, free accommodation, we don't all have that, huh".
A shopkeeper complained of being "retired and still working". Another lady adds: "we don't live on 1,000 euros a month".
"For 1,200 euros, I don't get up at 4 a.m.," annoys a passerby. Another is angry with the bosses of the large distribution: "When are we going to stop allowing these people to fuck their pockets full", he says. "It shocks everyone. It shocks me too," admitted Mr. Macron in return, pinning down "gaps" such that we "can no longer explain them to people".
Emmanuel Macron recalled the tax cuts, the abolition of the housing tax, the energy checks or the increase in small pensions with his highly contested pension reform.
The charges, "we have not stopped lightening them, I have already been yelled at over it", he argued. "Now we have to manage to recreate a wage dynamic... it's not the government that can do it," he pleaded, returning the ball to the camp of social dialogue.
A former local representative of the yellow vests, Fabrice Schlegel, also strongly challenged him on the "colossal deficit", the "public expenditure", accusing him of having "killed the hospital function, the local medicine" and to say " a lot of nonsense". "You've been smoking us out for five years," he charged.
“You are still a funny (..) You are asking me for more expenses in fact”, replied the president, contesting the figures aligned by his interlocutor.
At the same time, between 200 and 300 demonstrators were waiting for Mr. Macron near Pontarlier, held back at the cost of a few jostling by a cordon of gendarmerie more than a kilometer from the place of the speech, according to AFP journalists.
"They block people, it discourages people from coming on foot, I think that's the goal," says Pascal Maillard, 62, retired from Enedis. “We have never seen a president who protects himself in this way, and who despises us so much,” he gritted.
A saucepan in hand, Céline, 51 and primary school teacher, explains: "I came because I am against the pension reform, which will penalize women in particular. I had to walk 40 minutes to get here This device (...) is disproportionate: we are not terrorists, we just want to be heard, "she laments.
27/04/2023 14:48:07 - Dole (France) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
