Anger against the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, does not stop increasing. The streets of several French cities suffered serious riots on Thursday. The outlook has no sign of improving, at least for now. Given the tension in the streets and the crisis in which the country is plunged, we asked the professor Jonah Levi about whether the protests can escalate and what options the French president has to solve the deep gap that he has opened between the Government and the citizens.
Levy, who is Vice President and Director of Graduate Studies at UC Berkeley’s School of Political Science, says that “the kind of provocative statements like Macron’s interview the other day, where he was very dismissive of the protesters and their concerns ” can give air to the protests. Likewise, Professor Levy, who is director of the Center of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies, acknowledges that he does not believe that Macron can already convince French public opinion that his controversial pension reform is necessary.
Can the demonstrations against the pension reform grow and become even more violent, similar to the yellow vest movement?
It doesn’t seem like these protests have the staying power of the yellow vest protests. When organized, they usually involve strikes, which means people lose wages, whereas the vests were organized every Saturday. So it’s much harder to keep workers out of work. The costs are high. And I think that, in addition, there is a feeling that they are not going to win. Macron is not going to give up. They think they will make all these sacrifices and in the end, nothing will change. And that is certainly what the Macron government expects to happen and is counting on it.
What could breathe new life and push this towards the kind of protest we’ve seen in France before, which has forced governments to back down, including Macron from his previous pension reform in 2020, would be the kind of provocative statements like the Macron interview the other day, where he was very dismissive of the protesters and their concerns. This made the French even more eager to protest, just to show that they despise their behavior and the way the government has been so upright and arrogant.
The other possibility of escalation, I think, comes from the government’s police policies, which have been extremely aggressive. And that has been a growing trend under Macron in countering the yellow vests. The Police ended up killing several people, several people lost hands and eyes by police projectiles. Already this week, a minor had lost a thumb as a result of the protest. So the Government does not want the protests to get out of hand and also thinks that the discourse of painting the protesters as willing to violence is a triumph for the Government. That is why it sends the Police en masse and exercises very aggressive surveillance, either through the use of force or tear gas. But also arrests of people who are not even accused of a crime.
There is a risk that this type of conflict and police aggressiveness trigger a new response, especially if there are serious injuries or deaths, so I think that if the Government is not wrong and limits itself to waiting for the protesters. Protesters will most likely give up, but there is always the risk that some statement by government officials or some action by the police or some other dynamic that we cannot anticipate could breathe new life into these protests.
Can Emmanuel Macron convince the population about this reform? Or are we already at a point where it is impossible?
I don’t think I can convince the population of this reform. It has always been questioned whether this reform was even necessary, that the finances of French public pensions are not in terrible shape. There is a deficit, but demographic trends will end up eliminating that deficit, according to the government’s own projections. The government itself has a huge deficit. Thanks in large part to the combination of tax cuts and Macron’s lengthy cuts, spending policies to tackle France’s post-COVID debt cost.
French public debt now resembles that of Spain or Portugal. It is 115% of GDP, and the Government is running a deficit of around 5% of GDP. So there is something of a contradiction in saying that we cannot sustain the pension system. We have these cuts while the government is running very large deficits and cutting corporate taxes and also inheritance taxes. So there has always been a question: is this reform necessary?
Then there is an additional problem in the construction of the reform itself. All costs are imposed on retirees. There is no increase in contributions or employer contributions, nor is the threshold above which income taxes are not paid. None of that was on the table and the actual construction of the reform is misleadingly described as raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. But there are actually two factors that determine retirement. One is the legal minimum age, which does increase. But the other is the minimum number of years that must be contributed to collect a pension, which is about 43 years. With the new reform and the majority of people, very few people are 43 years old with contributions at 62 years old. Those who do are the poorest workers who dropped out of high school, who started working early, who had the lowest life expectancy. They concentrate all the disadvantages and are the ones affected by this reform. The age at which a full pension is received, even without having contributed the necessary years at that age, is 67 years. That is the de facto retirement age for many people, but the reform did not change that. So the reform concentrated all the costs, not only on the workers, but on the most disadvantaged. Workers who started their careers at a young age, who don’t earn a lot of money, often have physically difficult jobs, and you see that a lot in the protests of people who say they physically can’t work like this anymore. The construction of the reform itself raised many objections and, finally, only the way in which the Government has gone about this set.
The process has also hit people on the fringes of democracy with, in a series of French constitutional procedures, not only article 49.3, but others that limit the debate and the cut of the amendments to the bill of the Government. Macron has once again violated a promise to him that he made after being re-elected, saying: “I know the people did not vote for my program. I am going to govern in a more consensual way. I am going to listen. I am going to… “. So there are plenty of reasons why this reform will hurt Macron’s popularity and complicate efforts to work with unions on other issues that Macron would like to pursue.
Is your mandate at risk? Can you make other reforms after this, as you wanted to be, a reformist president?
It’s going to be very complicated. The fact is that you don’t really have a majority. And the only way he had to move forward with the pension reform was by using article 49.3 and that is because the Republican Party, the main conservative party that has the most in common with Macron, ideologically and programmatically, does not want to do him any favors, because he has basically destroyed his party by occupying the land and you know, there are also political disagreements. The party is fractured, which we saw even in the motion of no confidence. It is clear that many Republicans voted for the motion of no confidence. The party leader said not to.
Without 49.3, without the no-confidence procedure, it is likely that the bill would have failed. So can Macron get other bills through with LR, who is not really an ally because he is so divided internally? There is not much room for manoeuvre. There is not much margin for error. It’s hard to do it for four years.
In addition, article 49.3 since 2008, there was a constitutional reform that limits the number of times you can use article 49.3 as well. You can use it unlimited for the Social Security budget and the general government budget, and it was used 10 times last year to pass those two budgets. It can be used once per legislative session. Therefore, the Government cannot limit itself to governing by article 49.3 for four years.
There are limits to how often it can be used, and so the question becomes: is there a way for Macron to carve out a majority under normal circumstances? He has gotten a few bills through, sometimes siding with the Republicans, sometimes with the left. The left is probably much less willing to do anything with it and the right, as we have seen, is divided. Dissolving and calling early elections would be very risky for Macron. It is not clear that he fared better.
And change or let his prime minister, Elizabeth Borne, walk away. Is it a solution? It’s on the table?
Macron reaffirmed his support for her the other day, which can be read however you want. She was under fire, from the start, while some might argue that there is some misogyny in that criticism. But she was also seen as more of a technocrat and less of a politician, and she was appointed just before Macron lost the legislative elections. So a prime minister was really needed at that point, a politician that she could build. And instead of that, a technocrat came along, so there was a casting error. Her own government is male dominated and she has often acted somewhat misogynistically, so she didn’t want to send that message either. And she had tried to find a progressive woman to be his prime minister. Elizabeth Borne was not her first choice. Therefore, and it is probably even more difficult now to find someone. Because who wants to be there? And who has political skills?
So some say you need someone more political than her and not a technocrat. You need someone chosen or someone with a lot of experience. Sometimes they talk about Bruno Le MaireMinister of Economy, as a possible figure. christine lagarde, the director of the IMF, who was a minister under Sarkozy, is another figure that is mentioned, although why she wanted to accept the position. I’m not sure.
Realistically, if Macron fires her, he is in a way admitting that he has failed, and that is not what he likes to do. So I think he’ll keep her for a while. But if the protests get out of hand or if he really messes something up, he could try to change the casting. Having said this, let no one have any illusions about who is in charge now… This is the Macron government.
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