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People walk past Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
PARIS: “We can do it!” President Emmanuel Macron told France on April 16, 2019, the day after the fire that ravaged Notre Dame, as he set a target of five years to rebuild the great mediaeval edifice in the heart of Paris to its former glory.
At the re-opening ceremony on Saturday (Dec 7), Macron can boast that this target has been met, dispelling the doubts of many who argued that the goal was wildly ambitious.
Furthermore, he has scored a major diplomatic coup by attracting Donald Trump to the ceremony for his first foreign trip since his election victory. The US president-elect may hold talks in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who is also attending.
Macron will hold meetings with Trump and Zelenskyy before the Notre Dame proceedings, the presidency said. It was unclear, however, whether the three would hold a joint meeting and no Trump-Zelenskyy meeting has been officially confirmed.
The opening will cap a historic year for Paris after the Olympic Games which were launched by a ground-breaking opening ceremony on the Seine River that attracted controversy and praise.
While Macron will seek some glory in the reopening of Notre Dame, it also comes just three days after parliament voted to oust Prime Minister Michel Barnier, deepening a months-long political crisis.
With Barnier staying on as a caretaker until Macron finds a successor, the ceremony will take place without a permanent head of government.
The glow of the Olympics and Paralympics, which brought Parisians, the French and foreign visitors together over joyous summer weeks, now appears a parenthesis in a bleak and turbulent year.
“WE CAN DO THE IMPOSSIBLE”
But always defiant, Macron in an address to the nation on Thursday pointed to Notre Dame’s reconstruction as a source of motivation to find a way out of the political quagmire.
“It’s the proof that we’re able to do great things, that we can do the impossible… It’s the same thing we need to do for the nation,” he said.
Macron is to launch the reopening in an address outside the cathedral before its doors are officially opened by the clergy. On Sunday, he will attend the first mass open to the public.
The choreography was the subject of intense negotiations with the church: the Elysee wanted a presidential speech inside Notre Dame, but this caused debate within the Church and among defenders of France’s strictly secular system.
In the end, last week Macron spoke inside Notre Dame during a final inspection, allowing the world to discover its restored beauty on television.
It gave him a chance to reaffirm the success of meeting the five year goal despite all those who said “that it would not be possible, that it was crazy, that it was arbitrary, that we were going to do it wrongly”.
“He put in place a framework that made it possible. It’s not abnormal if he tries to profit from it or rejoices in it,” said a government source asking not to be named.
“FULL LEVEL OF GLORY”
Indeed, Macron has appeared to turn the reconstruction into a metaphor of his presidency, presenting it as a battle of boldness and ambition against the naysayers who predict failure.
In a typical Macedonian assertion, he last week told the artisans who worked on the reconstruction: “You have shown the world that nothing resists audacity.”
But for all the troubles at home, Macron will likely take solace from the presence of Trump as an example of his ability to blaze a trail on the international stage and show other European leaders it is possible to deal with the tycoon-turned-president.
Zelenskty will attend, said a Ukrainian official, asking not to be named. A meeting with Trump, who once boasted he could end Russia’s war on Ukraine in 24 hours, is “possible”, added the source.
The outgoing administration of Joe Biden will be represented by his wife Jill. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen will not be present.
Trump posted on his Truth Social network that Macron had “done a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”
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