T’s a extrade so diffused it went omitted for nearly 3 years. But President Emmanuel Macron ordered a extrade to the color of the French flag to locate echoes of heroism in France’s past.
Keen-eyed observers can see that the French red-white-and-blue tricolour flying above the Elysee Palace and additionally located in the back of Macron at information meetings and speeches now has a darker military blue instead of the preceding brilliant blue.
The military blue color marks a go back to tradition — it have been then president Valery Giscard d’Estaing who switched the brighter blue in 1976 in order that it matched the color of the European flag, which shows yellow stars on a blue background.
The extrade have been made at the flags located in the back of Macron at speeches from 2018 after which on the ones flying from the Elysee and different presidential homes from 2020, a presidential authentic, who requested now no longer to be named, advised AFP on Monday.
The authentic stated that the military blue color “conjures up the memory” of the heroes who fought withinside the French Revolution, the trenches of World War I and withinside the Resistance for the duration of World War II.
The extrade has sooner or later been observed after being found out in a book “Elysee Confidential” posted this Autumn through reporters, Eliot Blondet and Paul Larrouturou.
They suggested that the initiative got here from the top of operations on the Elysee Arnaud Jolens, whom the reporters interviewed for his or her book. The extrade value a symbolic 5,000 euros.
“Giscard modified this blue for cultured motives for the duration of integration with Europe, however the flag that each one the presidents took along side them ever considering turned into now no longer the actual French flag,” Jolens is quoted as saying.
The Elysee authentic additionally talked about that the flag at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris had continually had the military blue.
France on January 1 takes at the rotating EU presidency beneathneath Macron, a pro-European, even as he faces re-election warfare in April.