a hundred days away, enthusiasm has not yet been qualified – Libération

If the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which is approaching, must be a moment of celebration, Emmanuel Macron insists on security. A surprising technique to excite the French, who do not yet have their minds set on the Games.

Emmanuel Macron would have wanted to dampen the atmosphere that he would not have done otherwise. Monday April 15 in the morning, the Head of State, who had made an appointment on a news channel to launch the “D – 100 days” sequence before the Olympic Games started, stunned his world by evoking the fallback plans B and C, if by chance the opening ceremony could not be held on the Seine as planned, for security reasons. Understand: if the risk of a terrorist attack proves too great. It is obviously fortunate that all the competent safety authorities are hard at work to prevent this risk. To minimize it would be a mistake. But all competent authorities also say that discretion, on such a subject, generally prevails.

The exit of the Head of State is all the more surprising as it remained vague, and as it surprised even those around him or among the organizing authorities. Which, given the importance of the subject, is still puzzling. In any case, if Emmanuel Macron had decided to go on TV to ride the wave of “more than a hundred days before the start” and boost the enthusiasm of the French, it was a failure. The essential message retained was that of safety, and of this mother worried about letting her son attend the opening ceremony. Terrorist risks, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, it is an understatement to say that the Olympic ideals of peace and fraternity are struggling to find a place among these news stories, each more dramatic than the last. They perhaps explain that the French clearly do not yet have the Olympics in their minds. A recent Ipsos survey for the Sunday Tribune describes them as worried or indifferent. There are a hundred days left to twist the arm of this reputation which means that the French, necessarily complainers, have for years left their sense of party in the locker room.