Macron urges the French to be united, promises wide array of reforms

PARIS- French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday made a wide array of promises - from testing uniforms in schools to overhauling parental leave - in a bid to reinvigorate a second mandate marred by his unpopularity and contested reforms.

One week after appointing France's youngest ever prime minister, Macron, whose margin of manoeuvre is constrained by a lack of absolute majority in parliament, urged the French to be united to make the country stronger.

"I'm convinced that we have all the assets we need to succeed, and that we will live better tomorrow than we do today," he told a news conference.

Macron started out by spelling out measures concerning children including regulating, in a way he did not specify, screentime for children.

He said uniforms would be tested in about one hundred schools, adding that there would be more civic instruction classes and that all children in junior high school should have access to theater classes.

Macron also said he would ask his government to launch a new batch of liberal reforms to boost the economy, saying the country needed to be encouraged to 'produce more' and 'innovate more'.

"France will be stronger if it wins back its financial independence", he said. 

Reuters