The pitfall of the Constitutional Council passed, Emmanuel Macron immediately promulgated the pension reform, “a Pyrrhic victory” for the French president as the law divides the country and as its adoption has contributed to weakening its institutions.
On Friday, the nine “Sages”, whose decision had been awaited for weeks, finally censored only a few devices inscribed in the text, validating in particular the postponement of the starting age from 62 to 64, which crystallized so much opposition in the country.
Three months of protest, twelve days of national demonstrations, with systematically hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and even on four occasions more than a million protesters, according to the authorities – two to three times more according to the unions -, mountains of garbage cans in Paris and sometimes violence… have not made the executive relent.
The decision of the Constitutional Council, to which many opponents were suspended, marks “the end of the institutional and democratic journey” of the reform, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne decided on Friday on Twitter.
Without waiting, Emmanuel Macron promulgated the law, dismissing the demands of the unions and the opposition who called on him to be patient and who did not take off on Saturday.
“Absurd display of arrogance” for the herald of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, “contempt returned to the workers” according to the boss of the CFDT union Laurent Berger, “very worrying radicalization of power”, for the general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet.
” Provocation “
“In a logic of appeasement”, to “take stock” of the three months of crisis, and “also look at what has advanced alongside pensions”, the French president will deliver a televised speech on Monday at 6:00 p.m., replied government spokesman Olivier Véran.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has already set the tone on Saturday by affirming before the congress of the president’s party, Renaissance, that her government was ready to move forward. “We are determined to accelerate” the reforms after that of pensions, assured Élisabeth Borne. “We want to build France of full employment”, “guarantee equal opportunities”, “act” for health and even education, hammered the Prime Minister.
The editorials on Saturday morning were nevertheless rather negative in the French press, which sees the decision of the Constitutional Council as a “legal victory” but “a disaster for the nation”.
Among the regional dailies, The Republic of the Pyrenees denounces “a Pyrrhic victory”. “No one emerges victorious from this missed meeting between the people and those who represent them at the highest level. Except perhaps the extremes”, assures the Voice of the North.
For weeks, political commentators have been resolutely pessimistic about the state of democracy in France, and very critical of its president, who just confessed at the beginning of April that he regretted “not having always succeeded in convincing people about the need to this reform.
While France is one of the European countries where the retirement age is the lowest (but with very different systems), the executive justified its project by the need to respond to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population.
Without reform, the pension system would have shown a deficit of 13.5 billion euros in 2030, against a profit of 18 billion after this, he argued. Opponents, around two-thirds of French people according to polls, consider it “unfair”, especially for women and employees in arduous jobs.
“Presidential Monarch”
“There is in Emmanuel Macron an arrogance nourished by social ignorance”, estimates the historian and sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon, pessimistic for the future. “The time of revolutions could return, or it will be the accumulation of toxic rancor that will open the way to far-right populism,” he predicts in the left-wing daily Liberation.
Unions and the opposition have been denouncing for weeks a “democratic crisis”, in particular after the use by the executive of a constitutional provision allowing the reform to be adopted without a vote, failing to have been able to muster a majority in the National Assembly for vote it.
The French Constitution “gives extremely brutal instruments” to power, which “today comes up against a society that no longer supports too vertical decisions”, analyzes the constitutionalist Bastien Francois for theFrance Media Agency. “What was acceptable in the 60s, even the 80s, is less so today. »