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Tempers are heating up six days before the first round of the presidential election. All shots now seem allowed to hope to score a few points before the first round, which will be held this Sunday. Latest controversy to date: the outgoing president would have proposed during a trip to Fouras to put 12-year-old children in apprenticeship or work-study. At least that’s what Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular assured during his big meeting in Toulouse, outdoors, last Sunday.
Faced with the cold, and faced with a dense crowd of more than 25,000 people claimed on the Place du Capitole in Toulouse, Jean-Luc Mélenchon takes his audience to task. “And then, like many of you here, in the middle of this crowd where there are, I’m sure, teachers, professors, all those who take care of young people to help them emancipate through knowledge and education: how could they imagine sending a 12-year-old kid to an apprenticeship? “Shouts the candidate, booing the President of the Republic. Then Jean-Luc Mélenchon raises his voice again. “Whatever happens, this will not happen because the international conventions that France has signed prohibit sending a young person to work before the end of compulsory schooling. These are the international labor conventions. In France, compulsory education is sixteen years. No one will go to work first! »
What Macron said to Fouras
Did Emmanuel Macron really make this proposal? To understand the origin of the controversy, we must look at the remarks made by the candidate president during his trip to Fouras (Charente-Maritime) on Thursday. He is challenged by a restaurateur, who confides to experience the worst difficulties to hire.
Emmanuel Macron then formulates an answer in three points. He praises the merits of his unemployment insurance reform, which he proposes to strengthen to be “more directive”. Then he defends the need to meet training needs. Before getting to the controversial point. “Three, we need to make your professions better known. And therefore alternating, learning and orientation from the 5th to make these professions known. »
This is the sentence that the Insoumis interpreted as Emmanuel Macron’s desire to make twelve-year-old children work. “What he says remains vague, his words are sufficiently ambiguous and the truth is that he has turned back and that it is a victory for us”, still assures this Monday the deputy Alexis Corbière, spokesperson for Jean-Luc Melenchon.
What Emmanuel Macron answers
A version strongly contested this Monday morning by the candidate himself. “All weekend, fake news was relayed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he said on France Inter. I never said that at 12 you had to put young people in apprenticeship. It’s a scandal to say that. I said that at the age of 12, children had to be allowed to learn about trades. It has nothing to do. That is to say allow regions and businesses to come for a few hours. »
In other words, opponents of Emmanuel Macron would play on a question of punctuation. Those close to Emmanuel Macron have been claiming since the start of the controversy that the outgoing president, despite a rapid flow, would have made the distinction between alternating and learning on the one hand, and “orientation from the 5th from the other”.
This theory seems to be confirmed for two reasons. The candidate’s online program, to begin with, which makes no mention of the consecration of the work-study or apprenticeship at 12 years old. On the other hand, in the orientation section, on page 7, it is written as follows: “Know earlier to choose better later: all children will discover, from 5th to 3rd, several trades, including technical and manual trades” .
Three days before the trip to Fouras, Emmanuel Macron gave the details of his program on the subject in Dijon, alongside his new support from the ranks of PS François Rebsamen. Before any controversy was triggered, he explained this: “From the 5th, we must better support young people, families so that they can choose, he said before welcoming the diversification of the offer of internships in 3rd. But from the 5th, we must allow local elected officials to companies in the territory to all professional branches to be able to come to the college to explain the trades for which there are needs, ”he said then.
Insubordinate France persists
For Alexis Corbière, the very idea of this “orientation from the 5th” must in any case be fought. “At 12, we don’t touch kids, we don’t influence them to turn to jobs,” he pleads. You know what will happen. Children from the middle or upper classes will not feel any pressure. It will be harder for the children of the working classes. I would add that orientation, in good French, is not “information” or “awareness”. It’s terrifying. His thing is intellectual mush and we are right to denounce this liberal ideology which thinks that it is necessary very early, at 12, to be linked with the world of work”. Arguments that were not made by candidate Mélenchon on Sunday.