ÜThe blue European flag with the yellow stars is no longer fluttering over the grave of the Unknown Soldier on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The government had them dismantled again. But that has not subsided the excitement that the symbolic arch was flagged with European flags at the start of the French EU Council Presidency. Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen immediately celebrated the disappearance of the EU flag as a “beautiful patriotic victory”. She had previously identified a “provocation that offends those who fought for France” in the blue cloth. She was “indignant that the French flag over the grave of the Unknown Soldier has been replaced by the EU flag”. Le Pen called on President Macron to “fly our national flag” again.
It gave the impression that the triumphal arch was constantly flagged, but this is not the case. The tricolor flag hangs on the bow commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 only on special holidays such as July 14th or to commemorate the war on November 11th. Le Pen received approval mainly from the left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI). LFI MP Bastien Lachaud described the flagging as a “mistake”. “The unknown soldier did not die for Brussels,” he said. Europeans like Macron would rewrite history and thus give supporters of the Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain the opportunity to introduce themselves as true patriots with their front man Eric Zemmour. The left-wing presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI) complained on Monday on the radio station France Info that President Macron simply ignored the result of the 2005 European referendum.
Sarkozy’s resistance to European symbols
At that time, a majority of 55 percent of the French had rejected the European constitutional treaty, the aim of which was, among other things, to give European symbols such as the flag and the anthem a democratic legitimacy. On the basis of the referendum, President Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in 2007, worked to ensure that the European flag and the anthem borrowed from Beethoven’s ninth symphony were no longer mentioned in the Lisbon Treaty. The leader of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, complained that the EU flag was “synonymous with delocalization and loss of sovereignty”.
Le Pen’s rival on the extreme right, Eric Zemmour, blamed Macron for “sacrilege”. He was already one of the sharpest critics of the packaging campaign for the triumphal arch based on the plans of the artist Christo. He was indignant that Macron had given the stone testimony of French national history for an artistic experiment. When two young French unrolled a banderole on the wrapped triumphal arch with the inscription “Honor the soldiers who fell for our fatherland” and were temporarily arrested, Zemmour expressed his solidarity with them.
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