PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that France did not want to unleash \u201cWorld War III\u201d over Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and vowed referendums on key issues as he outlined his aims for for the remaining two years of his mandate in a marathon television appearance.
\nMacron, who came to power in 2017 promising radical change, will step down in 2027 after serving the maximum two terms allowed under the constitution.
\nOn occasion over the last year, Macron has appeared as a lame duck especially after his decision to hold snap legislative elections backfired, leaving the far-right as the biggest party in parliament and his own party a diminished, minority presence.
\nBut recent months have seen a newly energised Macron, boosted by his presence on the international front as he seeks to bring an end to the three-year-war sparked by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.
\n\u201cWe must help Ukraine defend itself but we do not want to unleash a Third World War,\u201d Macron said in the interview that lasted more than three hours.
\n\u201cThe war must cease and Ukraine must be in the best possible situation to go into negotiations,\u201d he added.
\nBut Macron said France was ready to start discussing with other European countries deploying French warplanes armed with nuclear weapons on their territory, as the United States does.
\n\u201cThe Americans have the bombs on planes in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkiye,\u201d Macron said.
\n\u201cWe are ready to open this discussion. I will define the framework in a very specific way in the weeks and months to come,\u201d he said.
\nThose who put their points of view in front of Macron ranged from the head of the hard-line CGT union, Sophie Binet, to Tibo Inshape, a muscular and massively followed fitness influencer.
\nAmid concern about some 600 jobs in France, Macron told Binet that the French operations of steelmaker ArcelorMittal would not be nationalized but vowed to save its two plants in the country.
\nIn a key announcement, he said he favored holding several referendums on the same day for voters to decide on French social and economic \u201creforms.\u201d
\n\u201cI want us to organize a series of consultations,\u201d Macron said, adding that the votes would take place on one day in coming months and address \u201cmajor\u201d economic and social reforms.
\nWhile he would not go into details, he was open to a suggestion by Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, who has proposed holding a referendum on a plan to reduce France\u2019s debt.
\nHowever, Macron rejected the idea of putting immigration issues to a popular vote despite repeated requests from the right and far right.
\nTackling delicate social issues, the French president spoke out against the wearing of religious symbols, such as the Islamic veil, in sports competitions, but he added that for non-competitive sports practice it was up to sports federations to decide.
\nWhile Macron, 47, must step down in 2027 after serving two consecutive terms, he could in theory return in 2032, something no French leader has ever done before.
\nBut he said at the end of the TV marathon he had not yet thought about his future after 2027 and was only thinking of France in his daily work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that France did not want to unleash \u201cWorld War III\u201d over Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and vowed referendums on key issues as he outlined his aims for for the remaining two years of his mandate in a marathon television appearance. Macron, who came to power in 2017 promising radical …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80998,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80983\/revisions\/80998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}