Macron this Monday at Mont Saint-Michel, symbol of a “people of conquerors and builders”

Continuing a memorial itinerary started on May 8 with a tribute to Jean Moulin in Lyon, Emmanuel Macron goes this Monday afternoon to Mont-Saint-Michel to celebrate the millennium of the foundation of the abbey which stands out on the famous islet. Channel rock. The Head of State will also launch preparations for the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings of June 6, 1944, which will take place in 2024, on Tuesday.

Emmanuel Macron must visit the exhibition “The residence of the Archangel”, which retraces through around thirty objects the history of this jewel of French heritage, and deliver a speech. Will he make the link with political news, punctuated in recent weeks by the long pension crisis, while his popularity rating is rebounding after several months of strong mistrust?

Since François Mitterrand in 1983, presidents have flocked to this emblematic place to convey their message. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy chose to launch his presidential campaign there.

The “walls and the eternity of the Mount” embody, just like the forces which landed on June 6, 1944 in Normandy, “the notions of resistance and resilience”, underlines an adviser to Emmanuel Macron. The silhouette of the abbey, between land and sea, symbolizes “everything that makes the French a people of conquerors and builders”, further notes the Elysée. “It is a place that attests to the ability of our people to adapt to the times” and which embodies the “battles that must and will have to be waged” in terms of ecology and climate change.

Ecological challenge

The site of Mont Saint-Michel, faced with recurring problems of silting, has been the subject of gigantic works, completed in 2015, to allow it to become an island again.

Already in 1983, François Mitterrand had come to say that man had to come to the aid of nature to repair what he himself had helped to destroy.

The busiest site in the country outside Ile-de-France, Mont-Saint-Michel attracted 2.8 million visitors last year, including 1.3 million for the abbey. It will not be closed to visitors during the presidential visit, but the prefect of La Manche has set up a protective perimeter, with searches at the entrance, for the millennium commemorations.

The head of state was regularly greeted by pot concerts during his travels after the adoption of the pension reform in mid-April. And the executive will again face a day of mobilization on Tuesday, two days before the examination in Parliament of a bill to repeal the retirement age at 64.

Tuesday morning, Emmanuel Macron will travel to Colleville-Montgomery (Calvados), on the site of the landing, to attend not the traditional ceremonies of June 6, planned in Ver-sur-Mer and chaired by the Minister of the Armies Sébastien Lecornu, but at the annual commemoration organized by the School of Marine Fusiliers. He will present with Léon Gautier, 100 years old, the last living Frenchman to have participated in the landing, the green berets to the students who have just succeeded in their commando internship.

His presence is a tribute to the 177 French who landed on June 6, 1944, grouped within the Commando Kieffer, alongside the 132,000 allies. Above all, the Head of State will officially set up the public interest group which will be responsible for preparing the major commemorations planned for the 80th anniversary.

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, also elected from Calvados, will also be present in Colleville… The opportunity for the two heads of the executive to appear side by side after the reframing of Emmanuel Macron as head of government last week on the strategy to adapt to the National Rally.