Macron gives lofty inaugural speech
French president vows to lift France from sense of decline, tackle today’s various crises
PARIS— In ceremonies marked by youthful optimism and old-world Napoleonic pomp, Emmanuel Macron swept into office Sunday as France’s new president, pledging to fortify the European Union, redesign French politics and glue together his divided nation.
Macron’s presidency began with a visit to troops wounded in overseas combat — a reminder of France’s large global military presence and role in fighting extremists from Syria to Africa.
He’s expected to name a prime minister imminently, and to show his commitment to reviving European unity, Macron takes his first presidential trip Monday to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In a lofty but lucid inaugural speech, Macron vowed to lift France out of its sense of decline and lost purpose, and seize again its place in the world. “The time has come for France to rise up to the occasion. The division and fractures across our society must be overcome . . . because the world expects us to be strong, solid, clairvoyant.”
He promised to take up France’s responsibility to tackle today’s crises — “the migration crisis, the climate challenge, authoritarian abuse, the excesses of capitalism in the world and, of course, terrorism. Nothing now strikes one and spares the other. We are all interdependent. We are all neighbours.”
The 39-year-old Macron is the youngest president in the country’s history and the eighth president of France’s Fifth Republic, which was created in 1958. A former economy minister with pro-business, pro-European views, Macron is the first French president who doesn’t originate from the country’s two mainstream parties.
Macron takes charge of a nation that, when Britain leaves the European Union in 2019, will become the EU’s only member with nuclear weapons and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Reviving support for European unity will be among his top priorities. France is a founding member of the 28-nation EU and its third-largest economy after Germany and Britain.
“We will need a more efficient Europe, a more democratic Europe, a more political Europe because it’s the instrument of our power and our sovereignty — I will work on that,” he said Sunday.
Macron has promised to reinvigorate French politics by bringing in new faces and will form a government in the coming days.
His Republic on the Move movement — barely a year old — is hoping to elect a majority of lawmakers in next month’s parliamentary elections so that he can pass his programs. It has announced an initial list of 428 candidates for the 577 seats up for grabs in France’s lower house of Parliament in the vote on June 11 and 18.
Many of the candidates are newcomers in politics. Their average age is 46, compared to 60 for the outgoing assembly. Half of them are women. Only 24 are lawmakers running for re-election.