Ladies and gentlemen parliamentarians,

Mr. Member and President of ExpoFrance 2025,

Ladies and gentlemen directors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

The President of the Republic supports France’s candidacy for the 2025 World Exhibition. This is an exceptional opportunity for the construction of Greater Paris and for the influence of France.

An exceptional opportunity also for the influence of our culture.

No one can say today what the France of 2025 will be, but what enthusiasm for the idea of inviting the world to our country, to the idea of being able to surprise it again and show it the best of the French dream.

 

I have been following the work of Jean Christophe Fromantin for a long time.

In the digital world, in foreign trade, and now in the Ministry of Culture and Communication, I have seen the French application grow in some way.

 

In this candidacy there are the ingredients of a new French pride. Pride based on creativity, innovation, intelligence, beauty.

 

What more beautiful project for our country, what more beautiful message of trust than to welcome the world, to speak to it and to make it speak by bringing people closer together.The World Exposition can be a moment of harmony, of brotherhood, the image of a confident France, smiling, intelligent, diverse, a key moment in opening up to the world.

 

What a formidable collective ambition in this project, both invigorating and unifying for a whole generation of artists, architects, urban planners, designers, entrepreneurs!

 

An important work of preparation and mobilization around this candidacy has already been carried out by elected officials from Ile-de-France, I am thinking of Bruno Le Roux and Luc Carvounas and by the association France Expo 2025, chaired by Jean-Christophe Fromantin. I would like to pay tribute to you for this work of the shadows, which makes possible today an original and ambitious French candidacy.

 

It is now necessary to give this French application all its chances to succeed and, to do so, to federate all the actors whose competition is indispensable for France to be selected as the organizing country of the 2025 World Exhibition.

 

As you know, the State support mechanism for the French candidacy will be carried out by Pascal Lamy, who was appointed to this position on April 14. Pascal Lamy has agreed to take on the responsibility of leading and steering on behalf of the State this major mobilizing and unifying project.

 

It will now be up to him to coordinate the preparation of France’s application, to meet the requirements set by the Bureau International des Expositions.

 

At his side, the involvement of all ministries and services of the State must be total.

 

I hope that the Ministry of Culture and Communication will play a central role, thanks to its formidable network of institutions and museums, thanks to its directorates-general whose representatives I thank today, thanks also to the DRAC, art schools, architecture schools present throughout the territory.

 

This ministry has a decisive role to play in mobilizing artists and the world of culture; I want young creation to seize the universal exhibition to make it a rallying point, a common ambition, a horizon.

 

The universal exhibition must be the exhibition of young French creation.

 

You see, Mr Fromantin, the determination of the government, the Ministry of Culture and Communication is complete.

 

When you proposed that I come here to present the work of your association on the French application, I naturally said yes, because it seemed to me that we were a natural partner in that application. Having agreed to do so, on the eve of tomorrow’s screening of the official film of the French candidacy, makes us even more pleased, and testifies to the importance you attach to the Ministry of Culture in the scheme.

 

Before I turn it over to you, and thank you for the work you’ve done, you and all the teams in the association that you chair, I want to tell you that like you I share the idea that France will win this competition only by being strongly mobilized and united at all levels, state and civil society.

 

Gustave Flaubert treated the Exhibition in his Dictionnaire des Idées reçues as a "19th century delirium". Nice prospect in reality; I hope that this creative madness will take over our country and Paris again.

 

Thank you.