The choice to pass the pension reform without a vote on the text is on the front page of major British, Spanish, German, Belgian, Italian and even American dailies. Their reading of the French situation is pessimistic to say the least.
“64 years is no”: the poster brandished in the hemicycle by the rebellious deputies is on the front page of many foreign dailies on Friday March 17, from New York Times American to Spanish El País passing through the Daily Telegraph British and the Belgian daily The evening. This last title on “the coup de force” of the executive in reference to the use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the pension reform without a vote in the National Assembly.
>> Pension reform: the front pages of the French press castigate Emmanuel Macron’s “failure” and “weakness”
across the Channel, the Guardian evokes a “forced passage” while The weather of Geneva speaks squarely of “nuclear button of 49.3”. “A democratic violence tolerated on the budgetary texts, estimates the Swiss daily, but not on a subject as sensitive and important for the French as pension reform.” A “reform imposed with a sledgehammer”asserts for his part the Tageszeitung. The German newspaper is surprised that in France, “A word from the executive rather than a formal vote in Parliament is enough to legally pass a bill that the population clearly rejects.”
Macron uses special powers to force through plan to raise pension age https://t.co/1RbB4ta7vr
— The Guardian (@guardian) March 17, 2023
The foreign press also points to the risk of a conflagration. In Italy, La Repubblica publishes on the front page the photo of demonstrators gathered Thursday evening at Place de la Concorde in Paris with smoke bombs and a twilight atmosphere. The German daily Die Zeit is concerned, meanwhile, about a protest that threatens to become radicalized, noting that in some municipalities the employees of the power stations have cut off the power supply.
Emmanuel Macron “has never seemed so weak”
The French president is widely identified as THE person responsible for this crisis. For the Daily Telegraphhe “never seemed so weak”. “His opponents, continues the newspaper, have often caricatured him as an elitist ‘president of the rich’, but by using this denial of democracy, he is only giving them ammunition. The danger for him is not resignation, but impotence for the rest of his term”.
Emmanuel Macron, first responsible and first victim of the sequence, judges the foreign editorialists. A president “weakened and isolated” for the New York Timesa head of state “very touched” For La Vanguardia Spanish. WhileEl País try the comparison: “Emmanuel Macron, always questioned for his haughty character and disconnected from the street, entered the same phase as his predecessors Alain Juppé, in 1995, and Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2010, when they too reformed pensions” .
This is the moment members of the French National Assembly broke into the country’s national anthem after President Emmanuel Macron moved to push through legislation to raise the retirement age for most workers to 64 from 62 without a vote in the chamber. https://t.co/UuDgbYnX0m pic.twitter.com/4wtURC7IOk
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 16, 2023
The foreign press fears long-term consequences, as evidenced by the title chosen by Die Zeit : “The Blocked Republic”. According to the German daily, “this reform will weigh on the country for a long time knowing that there are reforms from which a government never recovers”. The use of 49.3 “is the symbol of a deep institutional crisis”, abounds El País. The Free Belgium judge “considerable” THE “price to pay for this constitutional stratagem”. Emmanuel Macron “will in no way appease an already unleashed National Assembly and will provide grist for the mill of the populists”, predicts the Spanish newspaper.