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Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?

Macron’s narrow escape

It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.

Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).

Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.

Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).

Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.

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Will the Ukraine/Russia Ceasefire Last? COVID Containment in Europe | Europe In :60 | GZERO Media

Will the Ukraine ceasefire last? COVID containment in Europe

Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, with the view from Europe:

Will the recent ceasefire between Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists lead to a solution of the conflict?

That's much too early to say. At first, it remains to be seen if this ceasefire will hold. There have been a number of ceasefires and all of them have collapsed sooner or later. We'll see first what happens with this one. Will it lead to further political talks between Kiev and Moscow, primarily? That remains to be seen. I mean, there have been no indication so far of change in the basic Russian attitude of keeping on to Donbass, the one way or the other. So, let's hope for the best but let's be rather skeptical about all that's happening.

Will the recent upsurge of coronavirus and different measures taken against it in Spain lead to a new lockdown in Europe?

No, I don't think it will. I mean, you will certainly see, as you see elsewhere, sort of outburst here and there, but I think that there are better capabilities now in Europe to localize those particular outbursts and try to contain them. So, a return to the big lockdowns that was always the beginning of the year, that is, I think, neither necessary nor likely.

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