“A mega American-style show, a ‘super bowl’ final atmosphere, with a DJ and a crowd of supporters to galvanize the troops. This was the score that Emmanuel Macron wanted to play this Saturday afternoon at the Arena Défense”retains The evening. But for the Brussels daily, the “XXL Gathering” of the French president was above all of a “Excessive amount of doubt that has seized his camp”.
In fact, while the polls are still predicting a victory for the outgoing president, the gap is narrowing with Marine Le Pen, and “Saturday’s rally was an opportunity to galvanize supporters”remark Bloomberg. President “trying to stem his recent drop in the polls”while the popularity gain observed a few weeks ago in the face of his management of the Ukrainian crisis “faded”adds the economic agency.
On the Arena stage, the president himself urged his supporters not to “assuming he will win a second term this month, suggesting his far-right opponents could beat him”raise it Financial Times. “The French leader cited his own victory in 2017 and the UK’s Brexit vote the year before as examples of unexpected political outcomes”.
He therefore called for “general mobilization” vs “extremism”castigating the “great stunting” advocated by Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour – whom he never named, any more than his other opponents.
Rock star
This call was launched “at the end of a speech lasting more than two hours”during which Emmanuel Macron “detailed his electoral program and claimed the results of his mandate”writing The country. “There were pro-European and patriotic proclamations. And the promise to improve wages […]. And a defense of the French social model, combined with the requirement to work more”raising the retirement age from 62 to 65 – “one of the key proposals, and risky, of its program”underlines the Madrid daily.
The newspaper recognizes that “Macron was welcomed like a rock star” at this meeting, “In true American style”. But despite this “show of force in the final stretch of the campaign”the Catalan daily notes that “the feeling that the presidential election was a formality for Macron has evaporated”.
The same ambivalence shows through in the columns of the Corrierre della Sera. “Faced with this display of an almost insolent mastery”writes the Milan daily, “a doubt remains: the risk that such a spectacular and perfect meeting […] sanctions the gap between the smooth world of the president and the real world, inhabited by many French people anxious about filling up with gas”.
The weather also holds the “mastery” demonstrated by Emmanuel Macron during his speech. “Even if the atmosphere was less exuberant than during the rallies of some of his opponents”his only campaign rally “made it possible to better identify a candidate determined to no longer appear as a ‘disruptor’ but as a head of state who understood the problems and French anger that he was unable to calm. Will he succeed in convincing the French? That’s obviously the whole point”.