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PARIS – French premier Emmanuel Macron is going ahead and tackling one of the country’s many sacred cows: raising the retirement age – despite strong opposition from trade unions and the French public.
His Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne is set to present on Tuesday a broad stroke of pension reform – a centerpiece of Macron’s election campaign – that controversially aims to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 or 65 .
“As I promised you, this year will be a year of pension system reform that aims to balance our system for years and decades to come. We need to do more,” said Macron in his New Year’s Eve address.
The fate of pension reform may well determine the trajectory of the rest of Macron’s term at the Elysee. If the French president delivers, he will have proved he can succeed where predecessors often stumbled and failed. If he fails, the blow would dash previous promises that he could govern France despite losing his parliamentary majority last year.
But the reform bill comes at a very difficult time for the government as households and businesses were hit by inflation and increased energy and fuel bills after several plans to ease the effects of the war in Ukraine were unveiled last month. Many fear that if pensions become the center of growing discontent, street protests will break out.
“It’s hard to demonstrate against inflation, you can’t ask Putin to lower the price of gas. But if (pension) reform starts to clear tensions, people may feel it’s time to give up on the government on reform.” They can win a slim victory,” said Bruno Jeanbart, vice president of the OpinionWay polling institute.
despite indicating some flexibility On setting the legal retirement age, the government has come under fire from trade unions across the board, who are already preparing for nationwide protests and strike action. Macron’s government has engaged in lengthy talks with unions over the past few weeks but they have been largely fruitless. The debate is also expected to heat up in France’s National Assembly, with both left and right criticizing Macron’s plans to reform France’s state pension system.
fight over pension
One of Macron’s biggest tests since his re-election last year has been the escalating battle over pensions. During the presidential campaign, the French president vowed to reform France’s state pension system and bring it in line with European neighbors such as Spain and Germany, where the retirement age is 65 to 67 years. Official Predictions show that the finances of France’s state pension system are balanced in the short term but will run into losses in the long term.
Successive former presidents such as Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have attempted sweeping reforms, but have either failed completely or had to scale back their ambitions. Macron needs a victory to prove to the French that he is still a reform-minded president who is not afraid to disrupt the status quo. He also needs to show the Germans and others that France is not a Club Med splurger, but a good financial partner to deal with its high standards. public debt,
Failure, however, would signal that the French leader has become a lame-duck president after his party failed to win a majority in parliamentary elections held last June.
“I understand people who are concerned about changing the retirement age, but this is a topic that we now engage on, that the president has campaigned on. We have to show that we can get legislation , which will strengthen the credibility of the government and the president, ”said Marie Lebec, a lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance party.
Since losing its parliamentary majority, the government has managed to pass a number of bills, often with for this The support of the tail of the conservative party Les Républiques. But this time the situation is different.
“This is not the same type of reform. What has been done so far, the bills that have been bargained for, are nothing, they are peanuts. The pensions bill… This is a real moment of truth,” said conservative MP Pierre- Henry Dumont said.
The debate between Macron’s party, the left-wing NUPES coalition and the far-right National Rally has been hot-tempered in recent months, but this time the opposition is already expecting a field day against the government over the unpopular bill. If Macron cannot get the reform through parliament with the support of the Les Républiques, the government could withdraw Article 49.3 of the constitution to bypass parliament, increasing the risk of a vote of no confidence.
The LR party has said it is prepared to vote through pension reform on certain conditions And if changes to the legal retirement age are made more slowly than the president wishes. This is promising for the government but the Conservatives are divided and there is no guarantee that the leadership will get the votes.
This is also Macron’s second attempt to get pension reform through Parliament. In March 2020, the French President scrapped the old version of the pension bill in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis and a wave of protests led by trade unions.
yellow vest ghost
But the fiasco in the National Assembly is just one of the challenges facing the government. Macron’s prime minister has so far failed to bring more liberal trade unions onto the reform plans, and nationwide protest days and strike action are already being planned.
One sign of how jittery the government has become is that ministers are bending over backwards to quell the nascent protest movement, whether among healthcare workers, bakers, restaurant and bar owners. Last week, Macron promised a pay rise for doctors and ad hoc help for bakers facing soaring electricity bills.
“threat to [Macron] It is that the country becomes a mess and people feel that it is the fault of the government. There is inflation, there are difficulties for small businesses, and now we will add strikes, demonstrations, train cancellations,” Jeanbart said.
Potentially more troubling fallout for the government would be the rise of an unpredictable movement similar to the Yellow Vests movement that raged in 2018 and 2019, which turned violent and forced Macron to backtrack on a green tax fuel bill. It is risky that the president’s supporters have sought to downplay.
“We have seen [recent] Protest movements that emerged completely outside the box. But on pensions, this is a subject where the trade unions play a very central role and they remain partners in the negotiations with us,” Lebeck said.
Apart from the expected showdown with trade unions and opposition parties, there are few certainties for Macro over the next few months. However, this test will be a long one, with a final vote on the bill not expected before May.