Dear Friends,
In the January 2015 attacks, freedom and brotherhood were targeted. On November 13, it was our culture and our way of life that was affected. July 14 is the day of the national holiday, a holiday that symbolizes the struggle of a country for its freedoms through the centuries, that children, women and men have been victims of unprecedented violence. So it’s our freedoms and our constitution as a nation that have been targeted.
Our challenge, our duty, is to remain united and not give in to our values. To refuse the cynicism and outbidding that would lead to the weakening of our country. To protect our freedoms and our unity. That is why we are here.
This includes the freedom of creation and dissemination, now proclaimed by the Architecture and Heritage Creation Act that was just promulgated on July 8.
Defending creation also means giving artists and show technicians a suitable and sustainable framework of work. This is what we have done by giving force to the historic agreement concluded on the intermittence by the social partners of the sector by decree for an entry into force on 1er August. Agreement that the government will accompany a specific fund for sustainable employment in the sector endowed with 90 M€.
[It is also to support the creation and arts and cultural education that the President of the Republic announced at the Rencontres photographiques d'Arles that the budget for culture would be part of the priority budgets for 2017].
It is also for this reason that since 2012 a development plan of the current music scenes has been implemented, alongside the local authorities. The Nouvelle Aquitaine Region is particularly active in this network of music stages [€300 K out of €2 million]. I am delighted that we have been able to strengthen our support there this year.
It is always to support creation, francophone song in particular, and musical diversity in general that we have made French song quotas more effective on radio, with the support of the music industry.
The agreement we are signing, Dear Alain Rousset, is perfectly in line with the proactive approach I have just described: a partnership approach between the State and the Region for the benefit of the music industry in a territory that is committed, Nouvelle Aquitaine.
I would like to thank the CNV, the driving force behind this initiative and the backbone of the industry.
I am pleased to sign this convention at the Francofolies, which brings the public together in this national mourning and shows them the strength of music. A festival, Cher Gérard Pont, which makes the song dialogue with other arts, which mixes emerging talents and great masters revisiting their classics in an exemplary way.
It was important, Mr Mayor and Dear Jean-François Fountaine, I congratulate you, to maintain the Francofolies, in the present period with these minutes of silence yesterday, of applause today.
It is to preserve the cultural offer, music, theatre… that a fund to support theatres and festivals was created the day after the Bataclan, a fund that we doubled in June. Because it was necessary to accompany you in strengthening the necessary security measures, under the authority of the Prefect.
It is for these same reasons that Bernard Cazeneuve has specifically sent a Prefect referent on these issues and who is with us this evening.
The purpose of our presence here is to defend the values of our country, the ability of creation to come together, in a spirit of freedom and responsibility.
[Creation, which sometimes disturbs and yet brings together].
Our security will be stronger when everyone understands that he is the actor and the prescriber of the resistance and cohesion of our society.
[Our society that knows, the Francofolies testify, that creation will remain the irreducible bastion of all the riches of our diversity and our strength]. And that’s what the Francofolies contribute to.
Thank you.