The Elysee had finally suggested, Wednesday morning, that the President of the Republic did not intend to speak Friday. Mr Macron confirmed this in Vilnius, at the end of a NATO summit.

"I do not usually postpone things that are not scheduled," said the head of state, questioned by the press.

"I think I did interviews twice on July 14. So you will grant me some freedom with this practice. I said that I will make a point around July 14, I assure you, I will make a point around July 14. But I have not given you the date or the form and I will give them in due course," the president continued with a touch of annoyance.

He had also, in April, set this date himself for a "first assessment" of the "hundred days" decreed in the wake of the chaotic adoption of the pension reform. "One hundred days of appeasement, unity, ambitions and actions in the service of the France," he said.

But the period was marked by several days of riots following the death of Nahel, 17, killed by a policeman during a traffic stop in Nanterre.

This date was also ticked off by the entire political class, with a view to a cabinet reshuffle. The rumors were back at the end of last week but the government and its leader, Elisabeth Borne, spent the weekend.

Tuesday, before the parliamentarians of the majority, and Wednesday, receiving the unions and the employers, the Prime Minister has also projected on "the coming months".

Failing to expand the majority he lacks in the Assembly, and without much room for manoeuvre as the 2024 budget is being prepared, Emmanuel Macron seems not to have yet found the martingale for the rest of his five-year term.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne arrives at the Hotel Matignon for a meeting with unions and employers, July 12, 2023 in Paris © Bertrand GUAY / AFP

In these conditions, "to make an intervention without announcement, it would discredit his word," says a deputy of the presidential party Renaissance.

"With the hundred days, he put pressure on himself. He set a calendar, an appointment... He got into the syringe," said a former ministerial adviser.

But "it gives a feeling of floating, while the French need to be reassured," abounds another support of the president.

"I have never adhered to this theory of the hundred days," criticizes former President François Hollande. "I believe in the duration and therefore in the need to have a long time to set the main priorities of the country."

RAID, GIGN and BRI

While many municipalities announce to cancel the festivities of July 14 for fear of excesses, Mr. Macron promised to act "with the greatest determination" in case of "excesses".

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the deployment of an "exceptional device" of 45,000 police and gendarmes on the evenings of July 13 and 14, which resumes the "same modus operandi as during the riots" and will include the elite units of the RAID, GIGN and BRI as well as helicopters and armored vehicles of the gendarmerie in the cities "most affected" by the recent violence.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin at a press conference on the security arrangements planned for the celebrations of July 13 and 14, July 12, 2023 in Paris © Bertrand GUAY / AFP

For her part, the leader of the National Rally (RN) Marine Le Pen said she was "taken aback" by the many cancellations of festivities on July 14. "This is on the part of these municipalities, in reality, an admission of the total loss of confidence in the state," she said.

On the response to the riots, Mr. Macron was, as he had done last week in Pau, skeptical of "mechanical lessons or too fast, because the nature of this urban violence is very different from what we had known so far".

"Is this a case of underinvestment by the French state in city policy? The answer is no," he said to the left, recalling the increase in the budget for urban policy and the National Agency for Urban Renewal.

"Is it a lack of security forces or magistrates as others say? The answer is no," he added, insisting on the creation of police and magistrate posts under his presidency.

© 2023 AFP