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Demonstration against pension reform took place in Bordeaux.

Reuters

Rage and violence paralyze France

french pension reform

Days after the French government passed much-despised pension reforms, chaos reigns throughout the country.

At least 457 people were arrested and more than 441 security personnel were injured on Thursday in protests over the reforms, which will incrementally increase the retirement age from 62 to 64. For background on why President Emmanuel Macron says the reforms are central to plugging France’s ballooning debt hole and boosting productivity, see here.

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Car drivers queue to fill their fuel tank at a TotalEnergies gas station in Nice as petrol supplies are disrupted by a strike of French refineries and depots, France, March 20, 2023.

REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

Hard Numbers: French oil refinery blockades, China’s mRNA milestone, Moscow comes to Bali, IMF tweaks rules for Ukraine, TikTok hearing

french pension reform

13: As French protesters continue to strike and block oil refineries in response to the government’s recently passed pension reform, 13% of petrol stations around the country are running short on gas. What’s more, a lack of shipments from LNG terminals is raising fears of shortages – and elevated prices – across Europe.

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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

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EMMANUEL MACRON

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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Israel's new government and the battle for constitutional change | Europe In :60 | GZERO Media
youtu.be

Israeli constitutional crisis despite compromise attempts

israeli politics

Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Jerusalem on the protests in Israel and France.

What is really happening in Israel?

Well, it is really a profound crisis. It is cultural. We might argue it is political. It's got to be constitutional. The new government of Prime Minister Netanyahu, very much to the right, is trying to change the constitutional legal order of the country, and that is heavily opposed by large segments of Israeli society. The president has been trying to broker compromises failed, the crisis was only deepened to the detriment of the society and strength of Israel.

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Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde to denounce the government’s use of a constitutional loophole to pass the pension reform, raising the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly.

Marie Magnin/Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

What We’re Watching: France’s fiery response, Poland’s first big step, Israeli president’s “civil war” warning

french pension reform

Macron bypasses the legislature on pension reform

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday made the risky call to bypass the National Assembly, France’s powerful lower house, and push through a very unpopular pension reform scheme.

As expected, protesters responded with anger. More than 300 people were arrested overnight, and on Friday morning demonstrators halted production at a fuel refinery and briefly blocked traffic on a highway outside Paris.

(A brief recap on the proposal that’s sent France into a tailspin: Macron’s government wants to incrementally raise the national retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Starting from 2027, workers will need to have worked for 43 years, up from 41, to access a full pension.)

Why’s he doing this? Macron has long said that France's public spending, 14% of which goes toward its pension scheme – the highest of any OECD country after Greece and Italy – is crucial to addressing its growing debt-to-GDP ratio. But this approach is very unpopular in France, where retirement is sacred and government interference is abhorred.

Fearing he wouldn’t have the votes in the lower chamber, Macron triggered a constitutional loophole to get the bill through (it had already passed in the upper chamber). But by taking this route – which his political opponents say renders the bill illegitimate, though it is legal – Macron now opens himself up to serious political blowback.

On Friday, a group of opposition centrist lawmakers — backed by the far-left NUPES coalition — filed a no-confidence vote against the government, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced she'll table her own. But any vote would need to pass by an absolute majority to topple the government – meaning PM Élisabeth Borne and the cabinet, not the president. Still, that’s very unlikely to happen, analysts say.

But Macron, who cannot run again after 2027 due to term limits, is not out of the woods. Unions have vowed to make the government pay, and prolonged strikes are expected. Meanwhile, far-left and far-right factions say they’ll intensify efforts to topple the French government.

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French President Emmanuel Macron.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: A big day for Macron, Taiwan’s friend list, Russia droning on

french pension reform

A tense France waits

It’s a big day for French President Emmanuel Macron. After months of protests, strikes, and piling up trash, the National Assembly is set to decide on whether – and how – to vote on the president’s very unpopular pension reform plan, which would raise the national retirement age by two years to 64. (For a reminder of what’s at stake with this reform, why Macron says it is necessary, and why two-thirds of French despise it, see our explainer here.)

With only a slim majority in the lower house, Macron’s bloc needs support from at least some center-right lawmakers from Les Republicains to see this through, but it is still unclear if he’ll have the numbers, particularly since some of his own coalition members say they won't back the bill.

Macron now faces a very tough choice: call for a vote and risk losing the fight over his biggest domestic priority, which would see him turned into a lame duck president for the remainder of his five-year term. Or trigger a constitutional loophole that would rush the bill through without a vote but risk setting the streets on fire. If he chooses the latter, unions warn, his government will pay a hefty price...

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Protesters attend a demonstration against the French government's pension reform plan in Paris.

REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

What We’re Watching: French pension strikes, Nord Stream saboteurs, a centrist battle in the US, Canadian elections vs. China

french pension reform

French workers vs. Macron

“Pas question!” (no way!) is what over a million striking French workers told President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday as they tried to bring the country to a screeching halt over his controversial plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. In what was billed as the biggest strike to date against the pension reforms, protesters shut down schools, stopped transportation, and even blocked fuel deliveries. And they seem to have the people on their side – two-thirds of the French support their cause. But Macron has made the reform his No. 1 policy priority, seeing it as the only feasible way to ensure that the pension system stays solvent in a country with an aging population. And despite the pushback from the streets, Macron has the votes in parliament to ram through the changes. He’ll likely wait for the streets to die down a bit before he signs the reform bill – but sign it he will.

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French President Emmanuel Macron.

Reuters

Macron’s big gamble

french politics

Some things are sacred in France: buying fresh bread daily, offering a “bonjour” – always – before conversing with someone, maintaining the right to an early retirement.

President Emmanuel Macron is not seeking to interfere with French carbohydrate habits or greeting etiquette, but he is taking a political gambit on trying to reform the French pension system.

What’s he proposing? Nine months after winning a rare second term as president, Macron’s government this week laid out a plan for incrementally raising the national retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030. As a sweetener, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced a monthly increase of €100 ($107) for the minimum state pension, on top of additional perks for those who do physically taxing work or entered the workforce young.

To an outsider, it doesn’t seem like the biggest deal: In order to access a “full” pension, French workers will need to have worked for 43 years by 2027, up from 41. But for many, raising the age to 64 – after it was raised from 60 to 62 in 2010 – is a big deal.

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emmanuel macronfrench politicsfrench pension reform

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