Macron seen singing in the streets after pensions address

PARIS - A video surfaced Tuesday of French President Emmanuel Macron singing a traditional song in the street

after a televised address in which he sought to soothe tensions

over his unpopular pension reforms.

Many Internet users suspected the footage was faked using artificial intelligence or other means when it first emerged, but people close to Mr Macron told Agence France-Presse it was genuine.

“The President took a moment with his wife Brigitte after his speech on Monday evening. They encountered a group of young people who were singing… so he joined them in a song from the Pyrenees which he knows and loves,” they said.

In the night-time video, Mr Macron can be seen reading from his phone the words of Le Refuge, a song about a lodge in the mountain range on France’s south-western border with Spain. He was surrounded by men in their 20s and 30s singing vigorously.

The incident might at first have seemed a welcome show of connection with voters for the President, whose reforms including an increase to the pension age have earned him widespread animosity in recent weeks.

But the video was first published on the Facebook page of an organisation called Projet Canto.

While the group describes itself as preserving traditional songs in digital form, left-wing newspaper Liberation reported in 2022 that it was founded and run by far-right activists and offered recordings of songs with ties to Nazi Germany in its app.

Mr Macron “could not have known in the moment the backgrounds of every person he was speaking to”, the person in his entourage said.

The group told Liberation in 2022 that “political songs are part of the history of song, that’s why we’ve stored them,” saying it also had “far-left” songs in its catalogue.

Mr Macron previously sang Le Refuge during a trip to the Upper Pyrenees in 2022. AFP