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Emmanuel Macron likes to take risks. He himself has been in charge of repeating it over and over again throughout the six years that he has been holding the presidency of France. His big bet was in 2018, when he for months refused to reverse rising prices of fuels despite the crude reaction of the gilets jaunes (the yellow vests). He ended up losing that battle, but managed to win the war and in 2022 he renewed his mandate at the polls, where he established himself as the alternative to the far-right Marine Le Pen.
Now, Macron has decided to put his political future at risk again defending the unpopular pension reform which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 years and whose processing enters the final stretch this Thursday, when it will be put to a vote in the two chambers of the French Parliament.
Faced with the possibility of not obtaining the full support of the deputies, the Government could appeal to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows you to suppress parliamentary debate and pass a bill immediately without putting it to a vote. Using this mechanism, however, opens the door for the opposition to present another motion of censure, which must be processed within 48 hours. And not only that: it also threatens to heat up (even more) the mood in the street.
Protesters attend a demonstration against the French government’s pension reform plan in Paris, as part of the eighth day of national strike and protests in France, on March 15, 2023.
Since January, the main unions in the country, united in an unprecedented coalitionThey have called strikes and demonstrations throughout the territory. On Wednesday, 1.7 million peopleaccording to the unions and 480,000, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, took to the streets again in a last and desperate attempt to convince legislators not to support Macron’s plan.
A reform that is not only directly rejected by the union forces, but also by the parties of the left, the extreme right of Le Pen and, according to all the polls, by the opposition of at least two thirds of the French.
[Filibusterismo, moción de censura y otras claves de la polémica reforma de la jubilación en Francia]
This last day of mobilizations, the eighth so far this year, was marked by the effects of the called work stoppages for days in different sectors, such as energy or waste collection. In fact, in Paris, the marches against the pension reform were held among the more than 7,000 tons of garbage scattered on the sidewalks that have accumulated in the capital in the second week of the strike of the municipal garbage collectors.
“It’s the last cry of the trade union world,” Laurent Berger, the general secretary of the French Democratic Labor Conference (CFDT), the country’s main union, said at the start of the protest. This coincided with the meeting of a mixed commission composed by seven deputies and seven senators in which the final text was agreed behind closed doors.
Banderole unitaire de l’intersyndicale at the Paris demonstration ⤵️ https://t.co/BWo0fDUr2m pic.twitter.com/iI3VpOO8aC
— The CGT (@lacgtcommunique) March 15, 2023
Article 49.3: “The worst of the worst”
Despite the growing and manifest popular discontent, Macron seems unwilling to budge, nor has he been willing to sit down and talk to the unions. The President of the Republic remains convinced that change is essential to guarantee “the financial balance of the system by 2023“because, as he defended in January to the newspaper le parisien, “you have to work a little more”. If this is not done, it is estimated that in ten years a deficit of close to 150,000 million euros would accumulate.
Today, the Government claims to have a “solid majority” in Parliament, as Macron declared this week on French television bfmtv. In fact, on Wednesday night, the French president met with his prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, and some ministers to make sure that the reform has the necessary support. However, the vote in the National Assembly (lower house), which will take place in the afternoon after going through the Senate (upper house), it is expected adjusted.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a working meeting 500 days before the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
[Francia será inviable con una jubilación a los 62 años]
It is this uncertainty that has aroused fears about the possible use of article 49.3, which although has a long tradition and has been used repeatedly, it is popularly considered a last resort and a highly risky maneuver. Unions have already warned that their application would unleash public anger.
The general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT, the second French union), Philippe Martinez, has indicated that the implementation of this constitutional instrument would be “the worst of the worse” and that it would make “democracy waver” by not taking into account “what happens in the street”, collects efe. Along the same lines, the also leader of the CGT, Olivier Mateu, has denounced that if the Government resorts to 49.3 it would “break the rules of democracy” and should wait for “reactions”.
