Emmanuel Macron

The virus is now circulating at a speed that even the most pessimistic predictions had not anticipated. The number of contaminations has doubled in less than two weeks. Unlike the first wave, all regions are now at the alert threshold. In many places, we have started to postpone heart or cancer operations, sometimes already postponed until spring. We had sought to control its circulation by relying on our capacities to test, alert and protect. This is what we have been doing since August. Have we done everything right? No. We can always improve. We could have gone faster at the beginning with the testing. We should have been more respectful of barrier gestures, at home, with friends, places where we are most contaminated.

The European Union has languished and become enfeebled — and we are all to blame. There is a noticeable paucity of ideas and methods. The whole system has capitulated and is at a standstill. Summits bringing together heads of state and of government have become a parody: getting together behind closed doors, repeating lofty principles, changing a word or two in a statement so that it sounds slightly different from the last one. The system is cut off from the world and from real life. What did the Breton farmers I have met in the past few months think? They did not say that they were against Europe, or against the Common Agricultural Policy that is so important to us.