Beyond the immensity of joy I feel tonight, and the magnitude of the challenges facing the new President, I would like to share my immediate reaction and draw seven lessons from this presidential campaign.
Seven lessons on the importance of things whose seriousness I did not assess sufficiently and that must not be forgotten, especially for the forthcoming legislative elections.
1. The country is in a dire state: there is massive social deprivation and exclusion, and meritocracy is broken. We have had countless examples in this campaign, far beyond unemployment and poverty statistics.
2. The country is in terrible pain: many people experience anxiety in the face of such a poverty, even if they do not experience it themselves. Because of the threat to themselves, it implies later, or to their children, or because they cannot tolerate living in a country where so much poverty exists.
3. The country is deeply divided between those who think they can have a better future and those who think that only the return to the past can save our identity. Between those who think that wealth is scandalous, and those who think that poverty is scandalous. We should not regard success as suspicious and achievement as unhealthy.
4. Intermediary bodies are blown to pieces. The ethical awareness of the country no longer exists. All the principles that held us together have been called into question. The political parties that have existed for 100 years have collapsed, in the face of three parties that exist only because of talent and character.
5. Social media is the place of unleashed violence. And even if this violence is anonymous, it tells a truth: when you are weak, you must shout, and even insult so you can be heard. However, it will no doubt be necessary to complement the existing mechanisms, to help all the lies and defamations disappear more rapidly, with full respect for democracy, that social networks convey all too often today.
6. Every word must be weighed against this background, and by all those who can listen to them, even individual words or statements in isolation; and even by those who can, in bad faith, caricature them. (And the above extends to what I might have said as well, hurting unintentionally those who could have misinterpreted one or the other of my comments).
7. The future would have been bleak if we had not also witnessed, on this occasion, the emergence of young people from all horizons and convictions to replace the political class of the day, and we shall soon have the first expression and see them in action in the next parliamentary elections, in all parties, and in particular in the party of the new President.
If we all truly integrate these lessons, and a few others, not only will Emmanuel Macron have the means to bring the country together, in order to address future challenges, but all of us together we will be able to restore meaning to the idea of the beautiful and precious French democracy.