In Marseille, Emmanuel Macron at the bedside of traders

In front of the Bouches-du-Rhône Prefecture, where Emmanuel Macron participated in a technical meeting in the presence of institutional actors (the prosecutor of Marseille, Nicolas Besson, the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, the president of the South Region, François de Canson, etc.) and economic actors (CCI, UPE13, Les Entrepreneurs, trade associations), the atmosphere was subdued this Monday afternoon. A few meters away, on October 17, 500 businesses were impacted, including 331 damaged and 118 completely looted. In front of the deployed security system, passers-by group together. Some are ready to insult the tenant of the Élysée. But that’s not the case. They were barely able to see the president leave the premises.

“I know the trauma that October 17 was,” affirmed the Head of State in front of the representatives of the traders present. And to promise “never again” that. At the end of the meeting, we oscillate between satisfaction at having been listened to and questions about the future. “We felt so abandoned the first night that we needed someone by our side. We finally feel heard. We were several merchants speaking with the same voice,” relates Marie-Pierre Cartier, merchant in downtown Marseille and president of the Positive Commerce Association. “If the visit of the President of the Republic to Marseille is an opportunity for everyone to become aware of the disaster that this city has experienced, it is a good thing,” argues the President of the South Region, François de Canson, “he is fully aware of what is happening there today and if we are not capable of deploying the necessary efforts, I think that the city center of Marseille, in the long term, is doomed.”

Machine-translated from French