Emmanuel Macron has kicked off arguably the toughest trip of his presidency by promising ruling nationalists in Corsica more say over the Mediterranean island’s “future” as long as it remained within “the fold of the French Republic”.
France’s 40-year old centrist president is walking a tightrope that will test even his redoubtable powers of persuasion during the two-day visit, say commentators.
He must assuage fears that granting Corsica too much autonomy could foster a Catalonia-style breakaway bid in the future while seizing what nationalists call an “historic” opportunity to improve relations with the mainland.
Dubbed “the isle of beauty” and famed for producing Napoleon, Corsica has been a thorn in the side of successive French presidents with nationalists waging violent campaigns for greater autonomy or independence for decades.
The low point struck precisely 20 years ago yesterday, when nationalists gunned down Claude Erignac, the state’s top representative on the island in an assassination that shocked the country and drove tens of thousands of Corsicans into the streets.
Paying sombre tribute to the slain state prefect in the presence of his wife and two children, Mr Macron said that the entire island had been “sullied” by the killing for which nationalist Yvan Colonna is serving a life sentence. There could, he said, be “no forgetting and no amnesty”.
Corsica was an “unwavering” part ot the French Republic, he intoned.
But he said it must try to to offer Corsica “the future it aspires to, without giving into demands that would take it out of the Republican fold.”
While mafia killings are rife on the mountainous island, nationalist-linked violence has subsisided since 2014 when the separatist National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) called a ceasefire.
A coalition of separatists and autonomists then cemented their control of Corsica’s regional assembly in December elections.