Guillaume Horcajuelo / Associated Press
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POLITICS – It’s hard to find a city that attracts so much, and like a magnet, Emmanuel Macron. His very first holiday as head of state? In Marseille. His favorite football club? Marseille Olympics. A three-day visit in a new format? For Marseilles. A departure from tradition for a diplomatic meeting with Angela Merkel elsewhere than in Paris? Marseilles again. A surprise visit in the midst of the Covid crisis? Always Marseilles.
The only meeting between the two laps? In short… This Thursday, June 2, the Head of State returns to the direction of the Old Port, for a visit placed under the theme (burning on the spot) of schools, in the company of his new Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye.
A theme which was already on the agenda during his trip in September, and which responds to the numerous alerts issued by the socialist mayor of the Marseille city, Benoît Payan. “The Head of State will visit the Menpenti school and its mathematics laboratory, an innovative educational project, set up as part of the ‘school of the future’ experiment launched in September 2021 with the ‘Marseille en Grand’ plan” , says the Elysée.
The presidency specifies that the sequence will end with an exchange with the educational teams, the parents of pupils and the associations. The opportunity for Emmanuel Macron to write a new chapter in the very special relationship he has with the oldest city in France.
“I am in love with Marseille”
The anecdote is told in the book Emmanuel Macron, truths and legends (ed. Perrin), written by Arthur Berdah, journalist at Figaro. When the person concerned was still only Minister of the Economy, he imagined himself conquering the Marseille city: “if I had to go into politics, it would be to take the town hall of Marseille”. Fate would have it otherwise, but this attraction remained intact.
“I’m in love with Marseille, because I love tragic, Mediterranean cities. Because everything is both complex and possible. Because there is a mad generosity there”, justifies the president in this work, displaying the ambition to make the prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône “the capital of the Mediterranean”.
Hence this long-standing desire to make Marseille a laboratory of solutions for the country. “If we manage to solve the problems of Marseille, we will succeed in other territories which are suffering”, explained to the HuffPost Saïd Ahamada, LREM deputy from Marseille, on the subject of the “special attention” that the Head of State retains with regard to this “world city”. This is why the State is investing 3.6 billion euros for the renovation of the second largest city in France, where the wounds linked to the (bad) management of the Gaudin era are still alive, especially on housing.
“We speak frankly”
A voluntarism well helped by the good relationship he has with Benoît Payan, 44 years old like him. “We work a bit the same way. We talk to each other frankly, we seek efficiency. And then we have the same desires for Marseille”, admitted the socialist mayor in Point in the month of November.
“There is a common will between Payan and Macron: it is not a question of gentrifying the northern districts, but of creating a community by reducing the divide”, noted in The echoesJean-Marc Borello, who has the specificity of being both close to the Head of State and the Marseilles aedile.
A convergence that the two will not fail to display this Thursday since Benoît Payan has precisely made the renovation of schools a priority for his city. A cause for which the State has committed 400 million euros and 650 million euros in state loan guarantees as part of “Marseille en Grand”.
If Emmanuel Macron is not stingy with proofs of love for the Provencal city, it has not become a macronist. In the first round of the presidential election, it was Jean-Luc Mélenchon who came (largely) in the lead in Marseille, with 31.1%, far ahead of the outgoing president (22.6%). This did not prevent Emmanuel Macron from returning there between two rounds to hold his meeting.. and to multiply the allusions to Olympique de Marseille.
See also on The HuffPost: Death of a French journalist in Ukraine: “This subject cannot go unpunished”, says Emmanuel Macron
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