Speech of the President of the Republic, before the Parliament meeting in Congress at Versailles

MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from French to English – Published on July 10, 2018

Topic : Nation, institutions, and reform of the State

ONLY THE SPOKEN VERSION SHALL BE AUTHENTIC.

Versailles, Monday, July 9, 2018

President of the Congress,

The President of the Senate,

Mr. Prime minister,

Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the Government,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Ladies and Gentlemen Senators,

I haven’t forgotten anything and that you are no longer the choices that France has made a year ago : on the one hand, all the temptations of the closure and the fall, of the other, the promise of republican

I have not forgotten the fear of being downgraded for himself and for his children, the rage in front of the helpless public, the country that feels cut in two, not only between political parties opposed to it, but more serious still, between its base and its alleged summit. At the base, women and men in the workplace or who are seeking work without finding, all those who are struggling to make ends meet. And at the top, those who are in power, their rhetoric of so-called powerful who never change anything and that, in addition, one understands nothing, the impression of the citizen to be ignored, despised, and especially not to see, not see, where we must and can go together.

The anger, finally, born of the end of the ambitions of the collective, and the end of ambitions, family and personal. I’ve forgotten nothing of these angers, these fears, nothing. Also afraid of the other, great changes, with the roar of the world : the tensions with Iran, trade war launched by the United States, the divisions of Europe. I have not forgotten I have not forgotten and I will not forget. That is why I am before you, in this meeting that I wanted to annual, humble but resolved, the bearer of a mission of which I can not forget at any time that she committed the destiny of every French, every French and, therefore, the national destiny.

I said a humble but resolved, and I want you a secret : there is one thing that any president of the Republic knows, he knows that he can’t do everything, he knows that he will not any. And I can confirm, I know that I can not everything, I know that I cannot do everything. But my duty is not to me to solve and carry out tirelessly in this fight. Every president of the Republic knows the doubt, of course, and I am no exception to the rule, but I have the duty not to let doubt distract my thoughts and my will. This is a feature that, if one is realistic, door-to-humility oh, but the humility to oneself, and not to humility for France. For France and for his mission, the president of the Republic has the duty to aim high and I do not intend to fail in this duty.

This national destiny, we are, you as parliamentarians, the Government under the authority of the Prime minister, me as president, jointly responsible. You are the national representation. It is a great task, that of representing the sovereign people, not only a people of producers and consumers, driven by expectations of economic and social, not a people of citizens, of women and men who want to, eyes wide open, to shape their collective destiny. During this year, the Parliament has worked. The mission that the French we were assigned a year ago, you have never lost sight of : to strengthen our economy, to define a social model that is fair and equitable, consistent with the aspirations of our century, to restore the authority of the State and give it responsiveness and efficiency, to relaunch Europe.

And you have day after day in this direction. You have worked in the emergency to turn the page of political and blockages that handicapaient heavily in our country. Your action has ensured that the investment spread, the scandal of the draw to the university is terminated, the school may find its place, and the transmission of his dignity, the fight against terrorism is enshrined in our law, without having recourse to the state of emergency, that the job pays more, that France will adopt a budget that is sincere, effective and ambitious, and drops under the 3 % deficit. You have made it to France in its military capabilities through an act of programming a new ambition and new. You have lifted the blockages in the labour market created by a Code that has become obsolete and inadequate. You have saved him from bankruptcy some our public service of transport, the SNCF, by an unprecedented reform.

Here, you have demonstrated that there is no inevitability of stagnation and failure when prevailing strong political will guided by the general interest. You have committed to the building of a magnitude never seen before, including the site vocational training, learning, housing. That can, on all these issues, forget the situation in which was the country a year ago ? Who can forget that on each of these topics, it was said that these reforms were not possible a year ago ? And the site institutional, of course. The latter, to some, may be delayed and we assume this delay as it is due only to the deliberate choice to give priority to the daily life of the French. The Prime minister will present tomorrow the content in front of the national Assembly. I know already all the work that has been done in this chamber.

At the heart of this institutional reform is the desire for a larger freedom. Freedom of local authorities called to exploit their assets, their specific features, allowing for true differentiation. Freedom of citizens through an independent judiciary. Freedom of the Parliament that I want to be more representative of the French, renewed, with additional rights, animated by debates more effective.

I believe in the bicameral system, which ensures a democracy in a better balanced and I acknowledge the work done this year by the Senate to ensure that the transformations undertaken are adopted quickly.

It is, therefore, a reform of confidence, strengthening of the national representation. The Parliament thus renovated will have the power to conduct, with the Government, trade the more constructive for the spirit of dialogue and listening is essential. And it is this spirit that presided over all your deliberations and all your work in the year just ended. I would like to thank very strongly the Prime minister, Edouard PHILIPPE and his Government have tirelessly consulted, discussed, exchanged to carry out the necessary transformations in the country.

I mean, of course, that the commitment I had made before the French can annoy some. The idea of coming every year to give an account before the national representation of the mandate that the French have given me. This criticism is strange that is all at once to meet its commitments and the terms of the Constitution. The revision of 2008 has led this Congress in the form today decided, and I hear that it is the worst reproach, often by ease, this procedure.

This is why I have asked the Government to file as early as this week an amendment to the draft constitutional law that will ensure that, during the next Congress, I can stay not only to listen, but to respond to you.

The past year, yes, has been one of the commitments required. What we have said, we have done, in the dialog by accepting the disagreements, but often also in the national unity. Who would have bet here too a year ago ? This desire for action was at the heart of our promise, the French are seeing the first fruits to the school, on their payroll, on the labour market, but these are only the first fruits. I am perfectly aware of the difference between the magnitude of the reforms undertaken and the result felt. It takes time and sometimes a long time for the processing initiated for the prints in the reality of the country and I am aware, fully aware that he returns to me, whenever necessary, to recall the course, to make it more clear for everyone to come together and work together as much as possible and clear all the available forces of the country.

It is an effort that is never completed, as necessary, in particular to the president of the Republic, than to take them up again ceaselessly, to reformulate constantly, until the hurly-burly of the news always in movement, always in turmoil, the risk to confuse and lose the sense because our action is a block ! It is consistency !

There is not one side is an internal action and the other an external action, it is the same action, speaking to the French or addressed to the world, it is the same message : protect us and carry our values. There is not one side of an economic action and the other a social action, it is the same trait, the same goal : to be stronger to be able to be more righteous.

It’s at the bottom of the affirmation and the proposal of the French project for the Twenty-first century. After so many doubts, so many uncertainties, it is that expresses the project of France. The project of France for the French, men and women in their life as it is, often difficult, in the world as it is, we want to change each time it is required. The project of France for our Europe in danger, and for the world in which History has given to our country responsibilities eminent and now unique, since the Uk who sits with us in the security Council of the united Nations has decided to leave the european Union. This project requires us to be strong.

That is why we know that we need to straighten out our economy, free up and support our forces of creation.

We need the best school, the best university, the best research.

This is why we need to have the best army, the best defense systems possible. In a dangerous world, the security and the values of civilization must be able to defend themselves when they are threatened.

This project requires us to be in solidarity. A people that is broken, that is broken condemns himself to fail. This project requires us to be righteous, righteous among nations, who for us or for our european Union no project of domination, but a project balance which will be promoted to our values and respect for human rights, human rights and the law of nations. This French voice of progress, it is the one that we want to make. In the Face of the fear of economic downgrading, to fear the cultural, civilizational, we need a strong project, economic, social, national and european.

Just to put things in order, this project can only be made if we are strong and have a strong economy. This is the answer that we need to bring to the fear of economic downgrading and social. However, the key to a strong economy, it is investment. This is why from the first few weeks, we have reviewed the taxation of savings products, and reformed the tax on capital, not, as I hear it sometimes, to favor the rich, but to promote the business.

A policy for businesses, this is not a policy for the rich, it is a policy for the entire nation, an employment policy, a policy for the public services, a policy for those who remain on the margins, because of lack of work and lack of income. And how, on the one hand, denounce the weaknesses of our economic model, the capital that would leave the national borders, and the other, to create the conditions for the impossibility to invest in France ?

The investment is one of the nation, of the State with a large investment plan of 50 billion euros, but it must also be that of each citizen. This is why the savings of the French must be mobilised in the service of the economy. It is this framework that you have built during the last budget legislation. The French need to reclaim their shares in the capital of the French companies. The use of their savings, but also their closer association in the capital of companies in which they are employees are the key to a capitalism that is popular found.

It thus goes through the direct involvement of employees in the success of the company through a new impetus to the participation and the incentive is prepared by the Government and that you will be subjected to enter into force in 2019. I don’t like neither the caste nor the rents nor privileges, and I believe that there are successes that do not result in the enrichment money, but the creation of wealth, the prosperity of a nation are the foundation of any project of justice and equity.

If you want to share the cake, the first condition is that there is a cake. And these are the companies, bringing together shareholders, executives and workers, are the producers who make this cake and no one else. It is a lie to defend the employees if we do not defend companies.

It is impossible to distribute when you don’t produce enough. The money that is invested, circulated, which creates jobs is not the one that we thésaurise jealously. This is why those who stand, who dare to undertaking should find us at their sides. The tax to 75 % has not created jobs or improved the condition of anyone in France except, perhaps, among the wealth managers in Luxembourg, in Switzerland or the Cayman.

Free investment in France by a taxation adapted, competitive, it is as well to do back in our country the foreign investors who had left. The State should assume this choice.

The State should be for citizens and businesses, a person of trust that ensures an order but is intended to facilitate the initiative. This is why we have defined a set of new rules that, in case of error, provide opportunities for catch-up and simplify daily life. To accompany this economic transformation, unleash investment, reduce the tax burden on our economy, the State must also make choices because, let’s be clear, there cannot be a of the tax cut or expanding public investment without a slowdown of the continued rise in our expenses, and he cannot have a better grasp of those without choices strong and courageous.

It is in this spirit that the Prime minister will present in a few weeks the new decisions, allowing to keep the commitments of reduction of our public expenditure, taken in front of the French. This will, in particular, a reorganization of the State through more presence on the territories, greater flexibility of management. By the end of the year, the Prime minister will present the whole of its decisions for the transformation of the essential public action.

It is on this point that we confront it collectively at our own contradictions : everyone wants lower taxes

In this first year, many instruments have been put in place to support investment and innovation across the whole economy. I think, of course, to tax reforms that I have just mentioned, the labour market reforms that encourage risk-taking by allowing it to adapt when a market disappears or transforms. We now need to release the brakes on the growth of the business. The law Covenant should facilitate the creation of companies, encourage entrepreneurship and allow the failure to be more successful. It must also help to grow the business by making our less restrictive regulations and our financing is more abundant. It is important to continue this work of simplification, the opening of our stewardship, encouraging economic initiative and the creation of employment.

France must also return to a policy of sectors, ambitious and choose the key sectors where it will focus the efforts of public and private and thus create the conditions that will make our country the privileged land of the future economy. It is this cap that we have started to fix for the digital and artificial intelligence, agriculture and agri-food canada and industry. Against those who thought that it was necessary to choose between employment and innovation, we have decided not to miss the next technological revolutions. It is for this reason that I presented in February a national strategy, european for the deployment of artificial intelligence. This strategy revolves around growth, job creation, identification of new occupations, but also on the ethical principles to which we are attached and that these developments could undermine.

Against those who thought that certain sectors are bound to decline, we have rearmed our industry. Thanks to the reforms of the first year, for the first time in a long time in France, the major foreign groups have decided to develop in our country, production capacity, particularly in the energy and aerospace. We need to continue this work micro-economic field and continue the work, so that industrial development can unfold in a european framework fair. This is why France, with its partners, will support the proposal of the european Commission to make a levy on the turnover on the giants of the digital, which, today, do not pay taxes in our country.

Against those who condemned the French agricultural sector to the flight before inducing a competition devouring with the major countries of intensive production, we have undertaken a broad movement towards the French know-how, the excellence, the productions in all their great variety, and especially more respectful of the environment. You will then rebuild a food sovereignty quality for the health and well-being of our citizens, but also to enable our farmers to live decently from their work.

This policy dies, we will structure and amplify in the coming year, should help to re-establish the economic networks, the solidarity between firms, which shape the geography of our country and that we have too long abandoned to chance and fatalism. I believe what voluntarism that is not a leadership but who is to remind our companies that they come from somewhere, that they are parts from somewhere and that our lands are also their future.

Against those who thought that it was necessary to choose between growth and the transition to environmental and climate, we have decided to equip our businesses, our economy, for this great challenge of the century. It is for this reason that you have voted for in the act putting an end to the search and exploitation of hydrocarbons in France, which has made our country an example to the world. It is for this reason that we have taken note of the health concerns of our fellow citizens to adapt our productive model and make it exemplary in Europe and in France. I think, in particular, to the phasing out of the use of glyphosate.

It is for this same reason that in the coming weeks, the Government will have to present an ambitious strategy for reducing air pollution, adapting our forms of mobility such as the production of energy in our contemporary requirements. These are not only commitments, but also opportunities in the economic sectors that will develop, industries that are structured – I think in particular of the circular economy or the hydrogen – and therefore the choices that our economy and our society must now take and that we accompany.

I say to you, as representatives of the nation, the strength of our economy, when we have fully recovered, this is the basis of our project company, the project of justice that lies at the heart of the project that I want to wear the name of France.

This is not a project for the material success of a few, which I believe, this is a project for the improvement of the lives of all because this is not the small number that matters to me, but the community of our fellow citizens, from the base to the top of the social ladder.

All the societies which have propagated the idea that prosperity must necessarily result in inequality to the pay, I believe, at a high price. Some have already started to pay it when the popular classes and the middle classes have woken up to remind their leaders that the account was not there.

But let us not deceive ourselves, we also have a growing inequality. There is a French solution to the inequality. It progresses for more than 30 years. It is not, as with many of our neighbours, inequality of income, even if it exists. No, what was installed before all-in-France, these are the inequalities of fate : depending on where you are born, the family in which you grew up, schools you attended, your fate is often sealed. And such inequalities of destiny during the last 30 years have made progress in our country, that we want to see it or not.

And for me, it is this that haunts me, the French model of our century. The real social model of our country must choose to address the root causes of the inequalities of fate, those that are decided even before our birth, that promote insidiously the few and disadvantage, inexorably, to the other, with no way, without this I admit. The French model that I want to defend requires that this not be the birth, the luck or the networks that control the social situation, but the talent, effort, and merit.

Yes, to my eyes, the heart of a social policy, that we must carry is not to help people to live better with the condition in which they were born and meant to stay, but to get out.

The pillar first of the social policy which I believe is a policy of the empowerment of each one that frees us from the social determinism, which avoids the statute.

This is why for the past year, we have done so much for education. This is the fight of our century because it is at the heart of our economic transformation of post-industrial society in which we live. It is made of changes, ruptures, mutations that require us to better form at the beginning of life, but also throughout life. Since the birth of the Republic, since CONDORCET, the school is the very condition of the life of a citizen in a free and autonomous. But then we needed it perhaps more than ever, we have in recent decades shattered the dignity of the transmission, damaged the prestige of the professors, discredited the usefulness of the degree, the aggravation in this, the worst of all inequalities, that in which no one is responsible, the inequality of birth, the inequality of social condition.

It is radical decisions have been taken : the kindergarten compulsory 3-year part of these measures which we should be proud of.

Because out-of school children at this age don catch up with them over their delay of socialization and learning. However, these are the children of modest backgrounds, who were less educated or who were not. It shall enter into force from September 2019. The duplication of the classes of the CP and CE1 in the area of education priority said REP and REP is a measure of social justice is more effective than all the devices of redistribution, because it distributes in a differentiated way the core knowledge, read, write, count, behave.

The reform direction ensures better choices and trajectories that are most suitable to the talent of each and everyone. However, as the reform of the bachelor’s degree in three years is refocusing skills on the essential, if often lost sight of in the mists of ambition teaching little substantial, the implementation of Parcoursup gives young people the option of deciding more lucidly of their initial training.

In doing so, through these strong decisions, for a radical transformation of our education system, you have helped to train women and men more confident of their skills, better educated, and to create citizens who are more assured of their place in society and in the French nation. It is thus that we are well positioned with this French ideal of the Enlightenment that place that citizenship emancipated the top of the social conditions, of origins, as in the genus.

The emancipation also passes through the merit and work. A year ago, companies did not have the means to hire

We are thus at the heart of the system the youth and his master of learning and we are rebuilding all around them with only one goal, to end the ravages of unemployment of the youth. We lower the cost of the apprentice to the employer, make these sectors more attractive to young people, we can simplify the rules to make them more adapted to the reality of the work. Other countries have gone this route and were successful. Also I will ask you all a collective effort : to businesses to take apprentices, teachers, to promote, to families to support their children in this career path fulfilling. All we need to make this reform a great collective challenge of the nation in the years to come. As of this year, the vocational training and technology are far more popular with our young high school graduates. It is also for this reason that we have launched, particularly to the long-term unemployed and of young dropouts a plan of investment in skills on an unprecedented scale : 15 billion euros over five years to train 1 million youth and 1 million job seekers with long-term.

The emancipation through the work assumes that investment in skills. Still need to know what job we’re talking about. Here also, the inequalities are profound. At the side of those who benefit from stable contracts, a growing proportion of our fellow citizens, often less qualified, more fragile, is more and more condemned to a long list of jobs still more precarious, more and more short-term. How can you get to stay, raise a family, when we literally have perpetually the contracts of a few days ? The rules of Unemployment Insurance were able to unintentionally encourage the development of what is called the permittence and precariousness.

However, I believe that there is also a French solution, which allows to combine at the same time the economic progress and social progress. This is why I hope that the social partners are reviewing the rules of Unemployment Insurance so that, in this period of economic recovery, we can not only ensure that they reward far more to the recovery of activity, but also that they encourage the creation of quality jobs.

The draft law future professional will be amended in this sense in the next few days and these rules will be negotiated in the next months by the social partners to ensure that such a reform can enter into force in the spring of 2019.

These transformations are and, more broadly, the agenda of reforms that I want to be able to share with the social partners that I will receive the 17 July.

The Prime minister will be the backbone of these discussions from the start, but I want, in this second year that opens, restore the body to a Republic contract in which I believe, the one that will lay the foundations for a new social contract, that of the century which opens with a discussion with all social partners, but also of the elect. It is in its elaboration as to the details of its implementation that I want to invite from the 17 July to discuss the transformations of the Unemployment Insurance, as I just said, but also of the health at work and of all the topics essential to these transformations, do it in the constructive spirit with which we have been able to conduct in recent months the dialogue on gender equality between the Government and the social partners.

We want to re-establish sustainable growth, but also promote shared growth. This is why I receive the first 100 French companies during this month in order to solicit their engagement in the challenges that await us. I expect that they would undertake in terms of learning, employment in the most difficult districts or economic zones in suffering, because there will be no economic vitality without social mobilization of all stakeholders.

I didn’t ask to pledge by law, but by an active engagement, immediate commitments to job creation, hiring of apprentices, visible, committed on our territories. And so I wish in the coming months to continue this new phase, that of a mobilisation of our territories with all elected officers concerned, the main companies and investors. Because we need a new economic development and planning project and as you well know, you who are present here.

I won’t go back on the reforms land, the Prime minister will return tomorrow and the conference of the territories will have to meet in the next few days but the territorial policy in which I believe, is not that of special interests or categories, where he would have to play such a community against the State, not !

The territorial policy, which I believe is the one who is in the service of our fellow citizens, that you will avoid losing months as we have consistently done in recent decades in deliberate skills that he should be transferred to one or, rather, the other to change the following terms of reference, no ! The constitutional reform submitted by you, will be that of a decentralization of projects by the differentiation and development which I believe is the installation of new projects, a rebalancing of territories, through the installation of economic activities, accompanied by, furnished with all elected local officials by the government and the support of the State services in the framework of this project.

Here also, there also, we have the right to propose to our fellow citizens, more than the stuttering of the quarrels we know too, that too !

But the social progress, it passes through this emancipation, this ability that everyone should have in the society by the school, the merit and the work of reach, the social progress is also achieved through a collective fervour to ensure the dignity of each person, it is this national solidarity.

This was the fundamental intuition that has presided over the end of the Second world War to the creation of our social Security

It had to be universal, and we see everywhere that whole segments of our population have too little or too poorly covered that forego care or do not have access to.

It should respond to the anxieties of the deepest existence, and today we are left alone, or almost, in the face of major risks such as the loss of autonomy, of pensions uncertain.

She had to build confidence and we see, on the contrary, agreeably agitated by those who have the word “assistant” in the mouth, the defiance of the gnawing.

The priority of the coming year is simple : we need to build the Welfare State of the Twentieth century. A welfare State, emancipatory, universal, effective, empowering, that is to say, covering more, better protecting, based also on the same rights and the same duties to all.

Universal first. The Welfare State of the Twentieth century was designed for a society of full employment. The detention of a work and a work that is continuous, permanent, perennial, was thus became the sesame of access to the national solidarity. In a society hit by mass unemployment, by the intermittence of professional career paths, this sesame has lost its value and became a formidable barrier. This is why our solidarity has become in its operation statutory, it is attached to the quarries, to the sectors of activity and no longer corresponds to the rules of an economy of innovation and competence.

So we need to protect our fellow-citizens not according to their status or their sector of activity, but it is more just, more universal. As of this year, we extended Unemployment Insurance to self-employed workers and who have resigned according to the rules previously negotiated by the social partners. From 2019, we refondons our pension plan to better protect those whose careers specifically are chopped, unstable, atypical, often the careers of women.

To believe in this regard that we would like to remove the pension reversion is a rumor unhealthy to be afraid.

I say it clearly, nothing will change for the retirees of today, and for the simple reason that it is there that for the first time, nothing …[boos and applause] it is that for the first time, which has been selected has not been to make a saving on today’s retirees or those who are about to retire, but to re-establish a pension system that is fair, unique, transparent, a system that will gradually replace the quarantine of current plans !

Because as of today that no longer believe in the pension system ? Young people because they do not believe that this system will fund them and because when I hear voices all the world seems to forget is that our pension system to which I hold deeply, and that will be at the heart of this reform is a system of redistribution, that is to say a system based on solidarity between generations. Retirement is not a right to which it has contributed all his life

The redesign of this unique system, transparent, just, it is what you will have to discuss, to work and vote during the next year.

Effectively then, this is particularly the case in health, where the first reforms on the rest to load 0 or the prevention will be complemented by the presentation in the fall an in-depth transformation of our organisation of care on the national territory in order to respond to new risks, new diseases, and to the transformations of our health in an aging society, and where chronic diseases are much more numerous.

More civic and empowering them finally. The national solidarity is increasingly funded by taxes, that you voted in the matter of Unemployment Insurance has removed any contribution of wage replaced by the CSG but you should clearly explain the whole of this reform, does not see that the CSG increases of one side, forgetting that these are all social contributions by employees, which decreased from the other.

This reform has helped to improve the purchasing power of workers while preserving competitiveness and ensuring the maintenance of the rights, but this leads also to transform the philosophy of our national solidarity and somehow find the salt. This solidarity is less of an individual insurance, with a right to draw, financed by all taxpayers

And it is here that plays the actual transformation, but also the true dignity, the world must be protected, but each has its share of responsibility in the company.

It is by contributing to its extent, according to its possibilities that one becomes a citizen

It is this philosophy that will be implemented in the reform of Unemployment Insurance, as well as in social minima.

The national solidarity is reflected finally in the help that we need in an unconditional way to be more fragile. First of all, the children. What glory can we learn from social policies which have condemned to poverty one in five children in our country ?!

We will lift children out of poverty and its dramatic consequences. We will use in particular an action in the place of children in danger or abused and so many in our country. These initiatives will take place in the fall.

These are also our fellow citizens living with disabilities. For the latter, you have decided to increase the allocation disabled adult of 100 euros. The policy started of reintegration in the school, in the work will be continued with the budget choices are clear and support strengthened, but it is also a policy of return to full and complete citizenship that we assume and also to these persons, including those under the guardianship of a return to the right to vote.

What are, then, our fellow citizens living in poverty. The strategy of the fight against poverty will be presented in September and implementation in 2019, which is built with all of the actors, it does not simply offer a distribution policy to be classic but an investment policy and social support, not further aid in the balance of any account but a support to real activity, the work, the effectiveness of fundamental rights, health, housing, education. I want to make this action binding on all the living forces of the society and first and foremost, those who live in poverty. I don’t want a strategy that would impose high up in the torpor of the summer to address a topic or check a box but finally come out of the state of minority civic. Our fellow citizens who live in conditions of poverty and want to be the actors of their own lives and this change.

I want a strategy to fight against poverty, which does not allow our fellow citizens the poor to live better, but to get out of poverty, once and for all !

This is finally the more aged living in a situation of dependency

What we have seen in recent years emerge, it is a new social risk which we will all confront and a portion of the anguish that I hear of our fellow-citizens, the older is not just the anguish for themselves and their retirement, it is anguish for what they will become or those in which they have the burden. Therefore, we need to build the full funding and the organization of this new social risk, we can no longer ignore it, and pretend.

So we need to come to the aid of families, organize things differently, also meet the needs of personal long-term care FACILITY who are doing this wonderful job that I was describing, this is why the year 2019 will be devoted to this work and I hope that a law will be passed during this year that will respond to it.

It is certain, however, that responding to the fears of contemporary does not impose not only an economic action and social action. We live in a country that feels slyly fear of erasing cultural, a slow decline of its own landmarks, historical landmarks that have shaped our nation. Terrorism, the clash of the world, immigration, and our failures in terms of integration, the tensions of our society from several decades collide often in the confusion and are playing a fear of cultural, civilizational, feeling deaf in this world that happens would waive the one where we come from, with its fundamental and its values. This is why we need to restore order and respect republican, that is to say to restore this idea that democracy is not a neutral space, open to all forms but first shared recognition of the rights and duties which formed the foundation of the Republic.

This republican order, the security is the first pillar, because insecurity primarily affects the most modest, the most popular areas, the lower and middle classes who do not have necessarily have chosen where they live, and suffer all the consequences. The security police of the daily restores this closeness of the population and the police that gives a face to the authority and conjure the feeling of abandonment or forgetfulness of populations engaged in laws that are not those of the Republic. And have you begun to provide new ways for our forces of order and I thank you for that.

The reform of criminal procedure will go further and reduce the unnecessary burdens for our police officers and our police constables, as for our judges. You will have this important text to discuss and vote so that it can enter into force in the first quarter of 2019. We redéfinirons as well as the meaning of the sentence, because what we want is an authority of the Republic that enforces the rules with discernment and fairness, so that the prison, in particular, finds its significance in terms of punishment but also in terms of reintegration.

During these past few months, we have also put an end to the illegal occupation of the public domain which we we were too accustomed for years to Notre-Dame-des-Landes as to be Bure that would leave the people in disarray.

The security also covers the fight against terrorism. On this point, we have continued to make the transformations necessary, reset our organization at all levels, in particular through the law of internal security and the fight against terrorism, which has helped lift the state of emergency and to introduce into our law the essential instruments to combat contemporary terrorism.

We got to Marseille, in Trèbes, in Paris, to undergo new attacks from islamist terrorism of which the forms have changed, which no longer relies on international organizations strongly structured but is love in our societies themselves, using all contemporary means. New decisions will be taken and the work must continue without excitement, but without release, it is that of a generation. On these topics, this is a time for determined action and I want here to pay tribute to all our soldiers who fight in the Levant and in Africa, the enemy jihadist, homage as to our internal security forces who, with courage and calm to ensure the protection of our fellow citizens.

Beyond security, the republican order is based on a system of rights and duties that every citizen is the depositary and that we need to re-enable it.

The rights and duties, it is, of course, to the school that we teach in a more systematic way. It is for this reason that we will continue the training and guidance of teachers, in particular, on the secularism, but we will also by the national service universal, which will be clarified by the end of the year, after a necessary consultation. Since when did we not so surveyed the youth about his aspirations ? I believe deeply in the universal service because it is by knowing better of his countryman that perhaps never would have crossed otherwise that it makes us able to understand it better, to respect it and to feel the invisible bond that makes the community of fate of a nation. It is also the means to understand what is the commitment, the heart of our Republic, and I know that our youth will know how to take it.

The republic society that we want is a society of respect, and a company of the consideration. We have seen during the presidential campaign : a form of disrespect, and even violence, was commonplace in respect of a class of French, women. Who would have thought that this beginning of the Twenty-first century, the State should still fight to stop the harassment of everyday life, the inequality of wages, physical and moral violence to which women are subjected ?

This fight, remember, was at first surprised

We have, in so doing, preceded by a global movement. France when this movement has arisen among us was ready and aware. This, we have to be proud of, we have not followed the movement. We have anticipated because of the respect and consideration are not traded in a republic society and when they are, it is all the society which is in decline.

It’s the rest that is also produced on entire regions, held in contempt and condescension. Our policy for the districts is based on the return of the consideration, and this belief that to be born and to live in a district cannot be a stigma. Jobs swiss francs, the generalization of in-company placements, the return of public services, urban renewal programmes accelerated, pragmatic answers built up with citizens, a school adapted to allow sealing in of the territories, the forgotten, the return of a consideration national who too often is confused with the indifferentiation of plans expensive.

The republican order, it is this need to bring back into the fold of the Republic of the parts of society that are far away, the Republic has no reason to be in trouble with islam, any more than with any other religion. The secularism of the rest command that it does not have to know and simply wants to be guaranteed to everyone the freedom to believe or not to believe.

But there’s a read radical, aggressive islam, which fixed purpose to put into question our rules and our laws of free countries, free societies, the principles of which do not obey to the words of a religious order. It is important that the world knows that in France, individual liberty, freedom of thought, freedom to criticize, the equality of women and men, respect for individual choice, as long as they do not mortify the rights of citizens are inviolable principles.

He let everyone know that no questioning of these principles can only be accepted on the basis of a religious dogma.

Secularism, it is the mutual respect, respect of the society and the State with respect to the believers, respect for the believers in respect of the company and the principles of a State that belongs to all.

And I know that the vast majority of our muslim fellow-citizens know it, share it, approve of it and are willing to participate in this affirmation of our Republic. This is why since the autumn, we will clarify this situation by giving islam a framework and rules to ensure that practice everywhere in accordance with the laws of the Republic.

We will do this with the French of which this is the confession and with their representatives, the public order, civility ordinary. The independence of minds and individuals with respect to religion are not vain words in France, and this imposes a renovated setting, a harmony found.

This had been deferred in the name of this idea that everything is worth and that, at bottom, our country is not just an assemblage of chaotic cultures and traditions. On this ground, there grew up that insecurity, moral and political extremism. It is time for the Republic to recover from the cultural issue and consider once again as his duty to make emerge not as an official culture, but a shared culture. If the school is the crucible of this common culture, the company is the caisse de resonance and we need to work together to make France this voice, this tone, this look still has its uniqueness, which are the confluence of a thousand rivers, but that we recognize at first glance.

This is why we do so much effort for heritage. This is why we fight for the French language around the world. This is why we want a cultural policy that dares to say that it is phrases that are more beautiful, more profound, more rich than others, and that our duty is to give the best to all our compatriots. It is the policy of access to culture by the school, and throughout life and across all of our territories. That is why finally we need to take care of our authors, ensuring that they are remunerated appropriately and to defend their situation in Europe, where wins have been taken away but the fight continues. We do not want an official culture but the culture of the French plural, and living which can continue to flourish and to shine. We want to continue to produce a French imaginary.

This republican order finally built in the national cohesion and therefore in the relation to the other, the stranger. The fear that we need to hear, it is like that-and I know how these debates you have yourself concerned and I think that this topic cannot be resolved, neither in the emotion that creates the confusion or in the closure and the nationalist reaction which do not permit us to permanently set no problem. We must, on this subject, still, show us faithful to our Constitution, which protects unconditionally to those who ask for asylum, but imposes specific rules to those who, for economic reasons, leave their country to join ours.

The republican order requires the respect of borders, rules for reach what is the nation. It is the principle of the sovereignty and a duty to humanity that our Constitution provides for. It is by respecting this grammar that we need to face our contemporary challenges. There is no solution of the short-term, easy, neither emotion nor anger.

There is a demanding path, that of the Republic and cooperation in Europe. It goes through a policy that we need to rethink we need to regain the ambition, a partnership refound with Africa.

This youth, today, who leaves Africa to take on all the risk and who is not entitled to a large majority of the asylum, it is the youth of the despair, it is the youth who are no longer given project, which comes from the gulf of Guinea, or a good part of the Sahel. France and, with it, Europe must rebuild the terms of a partnership, since this contemporary Story doesn’t remind us one thing : we are not an island and we are destiny bound.

The second of our responses will go through a strengthening of our borders in Europe, an investment assumed that the France door, wanted to, and consistent with a policy of responsibility and solidarity within Europe. Any nationalist policy of the short-term will solve nothing in the migration situation, it will create it in the other, it will sow division.

Any policy that would mix all of the situations and don’t see that today, there are different situations depending on whether you come from a country at war or whether we do not also forget that national cohesion is indispensable that we must preserve. But never France will not accept the easy solutions that some people today propose, and which would consist in organising deportations through Europe to go and put in I don’t know what camp to its borders, in and also the strangers that you don’t want to.

This republican order which we believe is the foundation of a nation of free men and women. It is based on this ethical tension permanently, the same people of the Republic who requires to not yield to any facility contemporary. This is also a power in the Twenty-first century and it is the vocation of France to root their strength in the freedom of civic when too many observers would have us believe that there is no power by the subjection of the people, by the decline of freedoms, by the weakening of rights.

To cope with the fear of effacement, to this insecurity, cultural and civilizational as I mentioned, we also need to bring the French project to Europe. This project, is to rediscover the meaning and the substance of our cooperation in the face of all the challenges that we can overcome only together, as Europeans. This commitment, this French project has already allowed real progress that many thought impossible till then. We have made progress towards a Europe that protects more by a policy of defence in which the very idea had been abandoned for 70 years, by a better regulation of the work seconded in ensuring the protection of european workers, by the defence of no common interest on the commercial level, through the conclusion a few weeks back, a franco-German agreement of medium-term that had not been done for over 20 years and has helped lay the groundwork for a euro zone budget.

Since when did we all not waited for the crisis to move forward in practical terms ? This Europe-there is no enchantment nor remote, it supports the everyday lives of Europeans and their vital interests. However, these advances in real for which France fought should not make us forget the doubts, the divisions. Europe is still too slow, too bureaucratic, too divided to confront the brutality of political change, security, migration and technological. Our greatest error, however, would be to raise the spectres of the past and dreading the repeat of the Story or I do not know what the fate of the european conflict. It is not this that threatens us.

The truth is that our struggles of today require Europe because we will not be at the height of contemporary issues that by uniting our forces with those nations whose History has been our natural partners.

Neither the business challenges or the challenges of the climate or the challenges of defence or the economic challenges and monetary policy cannot be addressed in isolation and even less to the challenge of migration that I was telling you about at the moment. In these materials, the real solution can only be in the european cooperation.

And it is at the heart of these questions that are crucial for the future of Europe. It will necessarily be a Europe of the peoples. Perhaps the 28 people who make up the european Union will not feed-they all not the same rank, the same not but they will be able to act together, in exceptional circumstances, in the face of the challenges that confront us in the most vivid of what we are. Within Europe, France has made its voice heard with a clear plan, the one that I presented last October at the Sorbonne, that of a Europe that is more sovereign, more united, more democratic, a Europe that will be worn by a coalition of will and ambition and more paralyzed by the unanimisme captured by a few.

But we must also say clearly, the border true that the whole of Europe is, today, that separates the progressive nationalists.

And we have it for at least a decade. This will be difficult but the battle is clearly delineated. It will be at the heart of the issues of the european elections of 2019, which is up to these elections, which are also rotating. And as the heart of all threats, comes a great opportunity, it is this crisis that we fonderons the key european power, independence, european, european awareness of the future after 70 years of peace that we have too often led to lose sight of the meaning of Europe.

The crisis we are in, tells us one thing : the Europe of the sitting, the Europe of the doze is ended, a battle is being delivered that will end the project of the Europe in future, a nationalist reaction or that of a progressivism contemporary.

France raises its voice, it is heard because it is a strong vote of it is the voice of reason but also the voice of sometimes those who don’t, or are no longer, and speak for the defence of the common goods and I will apply myself to this fight.

It is for this reason that we are also engaged in other struggles, and that France has made its voice heard when the Us withdrew from the Paris Agreement. It is for this reason that we intervened on the iranian nuclear issue or the syrian crisis, it is to this that France today is in the initiative for reinventing multilateralism fort that the contemporary world needs. France again is this mediator, a trusted third party, who attempts to hold together the balance of the world and find the path to the future. It is this role necessary both for our safety, the defence of our values that today we are in. I believe in the possibility of defending a democracy which is strong and respected, I believe in the possibility of defending a strong Europe and a sovereign, I believe in the possibility of defending the universal values that we have made through this strong contemporary.

Such is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the cap that I fixed to the France, you will have understood, I would like to reconnect with this French project that we have lost sight of for too long by chilliness or intellectual comfort. It assumes, I agree with you, of wanting to be rid of the quarrels in which we are in any way confused or to which we are long accustomed.

This project can develop only if we do away with this renunciation where we are locked into for the past 40 years who would have it that France is only an average power. This idea has been nipped and bruised, I believe me that France has the means to become once again a power in the twenty-first century.

To carry out this project we start from the real, we do alourdirons no preconceptions, divisions annealed, ideas outdated, the progress, the dignity of the individual, the strength just of the Republic are our compasses and we are enough. Our only ideology is the size of France, no offense to some, and what we build no offense to the followers of the immediate future, we do for today but also for tomorrow, that is to say, for the youth, for it to flourish, to grow up in a country where she can choose her life, to feel full this membership is the strength of a people, and freely contribute to this project that we call a nation.

In sum, it is a patriotism new, reinvented, invigorated that we are in the process of building, it is not done in one day, it is not done in a year but this is it, Ladies and Gentlemen, I call upon you.

Long live the Republic ! Vive la France !

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure is not be perfect.