This isn’t going to help Jupiter’s image problem.
The French commentariat and En Marche’s political opponents are furious at President Emmanuel Macron’s decision not to attend a ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Amiens on Wednesday, instead choosing to continue his holiday at Fort de Brégançon.
Compounding the brouhaha: Both British Prime Minister Theresa May and Prince William took the trouble to attend while France’s Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was another no-show.
“Emmanuel Macron had already paused his vacation at Fort de Brégançon for Theresa May … he clearly had no intention of interrupting it again,” Le Parisien noted, referring to the British prime minister’s visit to the French Riviera for Brexit talks earlier this month. It continued: “Neither the president of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, a native of Amiens but a prisoner of Brégançon, nor Prime Minister Edouard Philippe deigned to interrupt their well-deserved rest.”
Le Progrès highlighted that the U.K., Australia, Germany, Canada and Ireland, among others, all sent high-level delegations to the ceremony, while France struggled to rustle up a top member of its government until the last moment.
In the end, it was Florence Parly, France’s minister for the armed forces, who interrupted her holidays to attend.
French MP Jacques Myard of the Les Républicains center-right party tweeted that the no-shows were evidence of Macron and Philippe’s “historical ignorance” and “a diplomatic fault: The U.K. is our greatest military ally.”
The victory of the allied forces against Germany at Amiens on August 8, 1918, helped bring an end to World War I. The four-day assault resulted in 46,000 allied casualties and 75,000 German losses.