Dear Frenchmen, Frenchwomen, my dear countrymen,
In this time of questions and uncertainty, we need to remind ourselves of what we are.
France is a country like no other.
We feel injustice more vividly than elsewhere. The expectancy of solidarity and mutual help is stronger.
Here, those who work finance the pensions of the retirees. Here, a great number of citizens pays a sometimes heavy income tax that reduces inequalities. Here, education, healthcare, security, and justice are accessible to everyone without care for their situation and wealth. The hardships of life like unemployment can be overcome thanks to the effort shared by everyone.
This is why France, among all nations, is one of the most brotherly and egalitarian.
It is also one of the most free, since everyone is protected within his right and freedom of opinion, conscience, belief, or philosophy.
And each citizen has the right to chose those who will carry his or her voice in the governance of the country, making of the laws, and big decisions to make.
Every person shares the destiny of others, and every person is called to decide the destiny of everyone: the French Nation is all that.
How can one not feel proud of being French?
I know of course that some of us are now dissatisfied or angry. Because the taxes are too high for them, the public services are too far off, because the paychecks are too low for some to live with dignity from the fruits of their labor, because our country doesn't offer the same chances of success based on where you live and what family you come from. All would want the country to be more prosperous, and society - more just.
I share this ambition. The society we want is one where, to succeed, you shouldn't need relations or wealth, but effort and work. (I'm sorry, this is too good. The only reason this dude is President is because of social networking and initial family wealth. He's the very definition of establishment, but anyways, let me go on).
In France, but also in Europe and in the world, disquietude and trouble have seized the minds. We need to answer to them with clear thoughts.
But there is one condition for this : do not tolerate any form of violence. I do not accept pressure or insults on the politicians elect by the people, for instance. I do not accept baseless accusations in general about medias, journalists, institutions, and government workers. If everyone starts being aggressive towards everyone, society collapses !
In order for hopes to triumph over fears, it is necessary and legitimate that we ask ourselves once more the big questions about our future.
This is why I offered and I'm launching today a big national debate that will take place until March 15. For the past few weeks, mayors have opened their town halls so that you may express your expectations there. We will now enter a larger phase, and you will be able to join local debates or express yourself on the internet to make your proposals and ideas heard. In the Hexagon (nickname for France due to its geography), in the off-shore territories, and among Frenchmen residing abroad. In villages, towns, districts, at the behest of mayors, elect deputies, associations, or simple citizens... In parliamentary, but also regional and department assemblies.
Mayors will now have a vital role since they are your elect politicians and thus the legitimate intermediary for citizen expression.
For me, there are no forbidden questions. We will not agree on everything; it is normal - that's democracy. But at least, we will show that we are a people that has no fear of talking, exchanging, and debating.
And maybe we will find that we can agree, as a majority, beyond our preferences, more often than we think.
I have not forgotten that I have been elected on a project, on big directives that I still hold true to. I still think that we need to give France back its prosperity so that she may be generous, because there is not one without the other. I still think that the fight against unemployment should be our big priority, and that jobs are first created in firms, and that we thus need to give them the means to develop themselves. I still think that we need to build anew an industrial, agricultural, and numerical sovereignty, and that we thus need to invest in research and development. I still think that we need to build anew a school of trust, a renovated social system to better protect Frenchmen and reduce inequalities at their root. I still think that the exhaustion of natural resources and climate change force us to rethink our model of development. We need to invent a productive, social, educational, environmental, and European project - more just and efficient. About these big directives, my determination has not changed.
But I also think that a clarification of our national and European project may emerge from this debate, new ways to see the future, new ideas.
I wish that most of the Frenchmen, most of us, would participate to this debate.
This debate will have to answer to the essential questions that have arisen these past weeks. This is why, with the Government, we have kept four big themes that cover most of the stakes of the Nation : the tax system and public spending, the organisation of the State and the public services, the ecological transition, the democracy and citizenship. About each of these themes, propositions and questions have already been expressed. I wish to formulate some that would not dry the debate but that seem to be at the heart of our musings.
The first one concerns our taxes, spending, and public action.
Tax is at the heart of our national solidarity. It finances our public services. It pays professors, firemen, policemen, the military, magistrates, nurses, and all the public employees that work for your service. It allows to give social allowances to the most fragile, as well as to finance certain big projects for the future, our research, our culture, and maintain our infrastructures. It is also the tax that allows to pay the interests of the country's very big debt, that has increased through time.
But tax, when it is too high, deprives our economy from resources that would be very useful to invest in firms, thus creating jobs and growth. And it deprives workers from the fruits of their labor. We will not go back on the steps we have taken to correct this to encourage investment and do so that work pays more. These measures have just been voted in and have just begun to work. The Parliament will evaluate them in a transparent manner, and with the necessary distance. We however have to question ourselves to go further.
How could we make our tax system more just and efficient? What taxes would you like to see reduced as a priority?
We cannot, no matter the situation, follow up on tax cuts without diminishing our global level of public spending.
What are the savings you feel should be prioritized?
Should we remove certain public services that seem obsolete or too expensive compared to their utility? On the other hand, do you see the need for new public services, and how would you finance them?
Our social model is also under fire. Some judge it insufficient, others too expensive because of the fees they pay. The efficiency of education as well as employment services is often criticized. The Government has begun to answer to that, after large discussions, with a strategy to better our healthcare, fight against poverty and against unemployment.
How to better organize our social pact? What are the objectives to define in priority?
The second topic to make decisions about is the organization of the state and the public communities.
The public services have a price, but they are vital : schools, police, army, hospitals, tribunals are essential for our social cohesion.
Are there too many administrative levels or too many levels of local communities? Should we reinforce decentralization and give more power of decision and action closer to the citizens? At which levels and for which services?
How would you like the State to be organized, and how would it improve its action? Should we rethink the working of the administration and how?
How can the State and local communities improve to better answer to the challenges of our most struggling territories, and what would you suggest?
The ecological transition is the third theme, essential to our future.
I have committed to goals of preserving the biodiversity and fighting against the global warming and air pollution. Today, no one can contest the imperious necessity to act fast. The more we delay challenging ourselves, the more these changes will be painful.
Doing the ecological transition helps to reduce expenditures in fuel, heating, recycling, and transports. But to succeed in this transition, we need to massively invest, and guide our more modest countrymen.
A national solidarity is necessary so that all Frenchmen can achieve it.
How do we finance the ecological transition: through income tax, other taxes, and what should be touched upon in priority?
How do we get to the most concrete solutions accessible to everyone, for example to replace one's old boiler or car? What are the simplest solutions, and the most tolerable from a financial perspective?
What are the solutions to travel, live, heat, and eat that should be thought of on a local level rather than on a national one? What are the concrete proposals you would have to speed up our environmental transition?
The question of biodiversity is also asked to everyone.
How can we scientifically guarantee the choices we have to make about it? How to spread these choices on a European and International level so that our farmers and industrialists would not be penalized compared to the foreign competition?
Finally, it is evident that the time our country is going through shows that we need to give more strength to the democracy and citizenship.
To be a citizen is to contribute to the decisions about the country's future by elections of representatives on a local, national, or European level. This system of representation is the foundation of our Republic, but it needs to be improved because many don't feel represented following these elections.
Should we count the white vote? Should we make voting mandatory?
What is the good amount of proportionality for legislative elections to have more just representation of all the political projects?
Should we limit the amount of parliamentarians or other categories of deputies, and in what proportions?
What role do our assemblies, including the Senate and the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council, should play to represent our territories and our civil society? Should we transform them and how?
Among other things, a big democracy like France has to be able to listen more often to the voice of its citizens.
What changes would you like to make citizen participation more active, and to make democracy more participatory?
Should we associate more directly non-elect citizens to public decision-making, for instance by drawing them at random?
Should we increase the amount of referendums, and who should have the initiative to call upon them?
Citizenship means also living together.
Our country has always been able to welcome those who flee wars, persecutions, and who have looked for refuge upon our soil : it is the right to asylum, that cannot be put into question. Our national community has also always been open to those who, born abroad, have chosen France in hopes of a better future : this is how France was built. However, this tradition is now shaken by tensions and doubts linked to immigration and the failure of our integration system.
What would you propose to improve the integration within our Nation? When it comes to immigration, once our obligations to asylum fulfilled, would you like for us to fix yearly objectives defined by the Parliament? What would you propose to answer to that challenge, one that will last for awhile?
The question of secularism is always the subject of important debates in France. Secularism is a primordial value so that different religious or philosophical convictions can live together in good intelligence and harmony. It is a synonym of freedom because it allows everyone to live how they want.
How to reinforce the principles of French secularism, in the relationship between the State and the religions of our country? How to guarantee the respect by all of the mutual comprehension and the intangible values of the Republic?
In the coming weeks, I invite you to debate to answer to these deciding questions for the future of our Nation. I also wish for you to be able, beyond these questions I suggested, to mention any other concrete subject you have the impression could better your daily existence.
This debate is a brand-new initiative that want firmly to derive all the conclusions from. It is neither an election, nor a referendum. It is your personal expression, in accordance to your history, opinions, and priorities that is expected here, without distinction of age or social condition. It is, I believe, a big step forward for our Republic than to consult its citizens this way. To guarantee your freedom of speech, I want this consultation to be organised independently, and to be framed by all the guarantees of loyalty and transparency.
It is thus that I intend to transform with you anger into solutions.
Your proposals will enable to build a new contract for the Nation, to structure the action of the Government and the Parliament, but also the positions of France at a European and international level. I will report back to you directly withing the next month following the end of the debate.
Dear Frenchmen, dear Frenchwomen, dear contrymen, I wish for the biggest number of you to attend this debate in order to make use of it for the future of our country.
In trust,
Emmanuel Macron
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