Emmanuel Macron this Wednesday appealed to the “general interest” to defend the unpopular pension reform that has turned the majority of French against him, prompting two motions of no confidence and bringing France to the brink of a political and social crisis. In a television interview, the President has declared his willingness to accept unpopularity among his fellow citizens for a law that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.
The interview served to justify the reform rather than to announce new measures or changes. It will hardly calm the spirits.
“This reform is not a luxury, it is not a pleasure, it is a necessity for the country,” said the French President in an interview with the one o’clock news on channels TF1 and France 2. “I would have preferred not to do, but it is my responsibility, it is in the general interest,” stressed the President.
Macron, who completes his second and final term in 2027, added: “Between short-term polls and the general interest of the country, I choose the general interest of the country, and if unpopularity is to be assumed today, I will.”
Macron confirmed that following the review of the reform by the Constitutional Court, he intends it to come into force “before the end of the year”. He therefore ruled out a repeal of the law and initially ruled out taking over his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who narrowly survived a motion of no confidence on Monday. Not to mention snap elections or a referendum on the law, as some in the opposition are calling for.
However, the President acknowledged that during the protests in France “a sense of injustice” had been expressed that the government needed to address. He promised measures to ensure that large companies with exceptional profits distribute a portion among wage earners and improve working conditions and wages.
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Referring to the tensions in the streets in recent days and episodes of threats against elected officials and MPs, after two months of peaceful demonstrations he declared: “We will not tolerate excess”. However, he specified that “we must listen to legitimate anger, which is not violence”.
On Tuesday night, at a meeting at the Élysée Palace with Macronista MPs, he declared: “The crowd has no legitimacy over the people who speak out before their elected officials.” It was a nod to a famous quote from Victor Hugo: “Often betrays the people.” The sentence confused minds.
In the interview, the President distinguished between the peaceful demonstrations by the trade unions and the violent ones. And he pointed to the Trumpists’ attack on the Washington Capitol in January 2021, or the incursion of a congressional crowd in Brasilia last January. “If the United States has lived everything it has experienced in the Capitol, if Brazil has lived what it has experienced (…), it must be said clearly: we respect, we listen, we try to penetrate through the country , but we cannot even accept the partisans nor the factions”.
Macron has spoken out after weeks of staying in the background and avoiding getting involved in the pension reform debate. The intervention, in an original format such as a simultaneous interview on the midday news, comes after a week of high political and social tensions in France.
Last Thursday, when the President verified that he lacked a majority in the National Assembly to pass the reform, he activated Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a law to be enforced by bypassing the vote. The opposition accused the government of undemocratic behavior and tabled two motions of no confidence, the only way to stop the reform and at the same time overthrow Prime Minister Borne.
One of the motions received 278 votes, nine lacked a majority. The reform was approved, but the result did not quench the anger on the streets. Paris and several French cities have already had six nights of spontaneous protests and riots. Unions have called a large nationwide demonstration for Thursday, the ninth since the protests began in January.
In the interview, Macron defended the democratic neatness of the reform. But the use of Article 49.3 and the opposition’s lack of only nine votes to overthrow the government cast doubt on Borne’s ability to govern. The president’s idea is to seek targeted alliances “with people from the left and from the right,” although the most obvious support may come from the moderate right.
“I regret that I wasn’t able to convince,” he admitted, summing up the past few months. But he added: “There is a tendency in our democracies to want to abstract from the reality principle.”
He hasn’t convinced anyone, neither the unions nor the opposition. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party and Macron’s rival in the last two presidential elections, responded: “We have listened to the mechanical and hesitant words of a man who seems increasingly lonely and seems to have lost all sense of reality. , all contacts with the outside world, maybe even with your own”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left’s leading party, the anti-capitalist and Eurosceptic La France Insoumisa, said: “As time passes, we feel that this man lives outside of all reality to tell us who we are what we are We abstract from the reality principle. The truth is he didn’t understand anything.”
For Macron, it was about regaining the pulse of the country after the divorce that caused pension reform. Convince and appease. The task becomes difficult.
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