Georges Pompidou continues to haunt French politics. Especially one of his short sentences pronounced at Matignon one evening in 1966 in front of one of his secretaries of state, Jacques Chirac. “But stop pissing off the French! There are too many laws, too many texts, too many regulations in this country! We’re dying! »would have said the Prime Minister, icon of the “glorious thirty” and lover of poetry at other times.
“Stop bothering the French”… A triturated and malleable expression, adaptable to all subjects. In several ministerial offices, it has reappeared for several months, always in “off”, especially when it comes to ecology and climate, a sensitive area where many actors are calling for stronger constraints.
Since 1966, the expression has flourished. Greeted by rounds of applause, it has punctuated right-wing meetings for years. Having become President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac hastened to report it to a journalist, Thierry Desjardins, who had immortalized it in a book. Promise of liberation of energies in a country which would collapse under the directives and the laws, even the most moderate use it. “President Pompidou said ‘Don’t bother the French.’ We must give this desire for politics to the French”tweeted Alain Juppé on 1is avril 2015.
Emmanuel Macron had already reactivated it, on January 4, 2022, during an interview with Parisian mainly devoted to vaccination against Covid-19. “Me, I am not for pissing off the French. I rail all day against the administration when they block them. Well there, the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off”had launched the head of state.
“We are not going to force everyone either”
A few weeks ago, on the sidelines of the announcement on the sobriety plan, the idea of limiting speed to 110 km / h on the motorways made a comeback after having been one of the 149 proposals of the citizens’ convention for the climate in 2019.
An idea swept away by the government. “When you go from 130 km/h to 110 km/h, you reduce fuel consumption by 20%, noted Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on November 14 on BFM-TV. From there to imposing it on the French, I think it’s not the right way. (…) We can’t function with bans. If we are not careful to get everyone on board, at some point we will not move forward. »
While inflation continues to nibble purchasing power each month, the government does not want to antagonize the French on the subjects of daily life, in particular on travel. A strategy visible in the words of Emmanuel Macron. “It has to be a choice, we are not going to force everyone either”he said about the railway in his second video dedicated to ecology and published on social networks on Sunday, November 27.
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