The French Constitutional Court’s ruling on the pensions reform on Friday (14 April) will mark the end of a long, winding and bumpy road for a piece of legislation most French people rejected. Whatever comes out of the ruling, the political landscape will be shattered, recovery will be long, and Macron only has himself to blame.
Three months after it was unveiled on 10 January, the pension reform is now undergoing its final legal scrutiny by the Conseil Constitutionnel, a nine-member body comprised of former ministers and senior civil servants.
Pushing the reform through was no mean feat. Political pushbacks against the reform were fierce, with millions taking to the streets in more than a dozen nationwide protests. Once despised as cliques that were far from workers’ concerns, trade unions came through in a rare show of unity as the voice of all ordinary – and angry – French citizens.
Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 campaign promise to raise the legal retirement age to 65 was marred from the get-go: personal notes and polls from Macron’s campaign team, leaked to investigative media Mediapart in mid-March, showed just how contentious a pensions reform would be.
Today, an average of 70% of workers oppose the reform, no matter the severity of the strikes and their impact on people’s daily lives.
Yet Macron pushed through the law, with the knowledge that it would be politically explosive, making inventive use of the government’s constitutional rights in the process.
Indeed, this was no ordinary parliamentary debate. In the name of speed and efficiency, the government triggered the now-infamous 47-1 article from the Constitution, capping debates to 20 days in each House – infuriating opposition parties, fuelling anger in the streets, and raising legal questions about whether the government could actually use such a legal tool.
The bill was eventually adopted without a vote through the equally infamous 49-3 Constitutional article. The no-confidence votes that followed the invocation of Article 49-3 were all defeated.
Since then, the government and the opposition have called on the Conseil Constitutionnel to ensure the law’s legality. Whether the speeding up of the debates was legal is the main question being asked – one that the Conseil will have to look into for the first time in its history.
Whatever comes out of the ruling, due to be published on Friday, matters little. The reform may be in keeping with the law, but its political legitimacy is long gone.
The fierce pushbacks were only met by Macron’s cold and stoic response: it is legal, he said time and time again. There were parliamentary debates, he added, so it must be democratic.
While this may be true in theory, the political cost is high. According to a poll released on Wednesday, as people have lost trust in political institutions, Macron’s popularity has also plummeted.
The violence on the fringes of the protests raises the question of how far some people are willing to go – and how forceful police repression should be, as videos of police brutality emerged online.
The Conseil, an inherently legalistic institution, is now presented as the final broker of peace in a messy political landscape. But this, too, carries real political risks.
If it rules against the entire reform because the use of Article 47-1 was illegal, Macron and his party will waste no time in claiming that the ruling is political.
If the Conseil leaves the reform as is or says nothing about raising the retirement age, it will be accused by protestors of meeting the government’s demands.
Either way, the Court’s credibility as an impartial body will take a hit.
As for Macron, he appears more out of touch than ever, pushing through a reform that no one wants, the necessity of which remains questionable. His political gravitas, and the Presidential image he embodies, are shattered.
Whatever the verdict of the Conseil, this Pyrrhic victory will linger in people’s minds, widening the gap between ordinary citizens and the ruling political elite and doing nothing to bring people together around shared values and a shared sense of national belonging at a time of war on the European continent and persistent inflation.
Macron didn’t have to do it. He’s only got himself to blame for the mess.
The Roundup
2023 will mark the beginning of the decline in fossil fuels, following the peak of global electricity emissions in 2022, according to a new report released on Wednesday (12 April) by energy think-tank Ember.
EU countries have become the main recipients of their own development aid, statistics published on Wednesday (12 April) by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have revealed.
The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest since 2017 for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, according to data published on Wednesday (12 April) by the International Organisation for Migration.
The US Special Envoy for the Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, paid a two-day visit to Tirana, where he met with leaders from every side of the political spectrum, except former prime minister Sali Berisha, just over a month before local elections.
The European privacy regulators decided on Thursday (13 April) to launch a dedicated task force to address the privacy concerns related to the world’s most famous chatbot.
And finally – check out our Politics Brief: A monument to peace and pragmatism.
Look out for…
- Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski in Kowal, Poland; meets with Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Henryk Kowalczyk.
- Financial Stability and Financial Services Commissioner Mairead McGuinness meets with representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) on sustainable finance policy in Washington D.C.
- Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis participates in a meeting with The National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) Board companies in Washington D.C.
[Edited by Alice Taylor/Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
