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Will Macron’s moves regain him popularity in France?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
Will President Macron, with his new government, succeed in relaunching himself in terms of popularity? It remains to be seen, but I think the odds are there. He clearly faces an uphill battle against the more nationalist forces in Le Pen prior to the European Parliament elections in late May, early June. And that is critical for him. His opinion poll standing is fairly low right now. He really needs to do better in European Parliament elections. And I think, yep, he might do it, but it remains to be seen.How is European support for Ukraine coming along?
That was, of course, a problem with the summit in December where Hungary, Viktor Orban, blocked the expected decision to give 50 billion Euros to Ukraine over the next few years. There's now I wouldn't say white smoke as of yet, but white puffs of smoke at least coming out of the discussions and rather hard discussions in Brussels. And I would expect that at the next summit on February 1st there will be an okay, a green light, for the 50 billion Euros for Ukraine. That is very much needed. And now the question is, of course, what will happen with American money with the mess in the US House of Representatives?
The Graphic Truth: French Parliamentary districts overseas
For citizens of most democracies, moving overseas usually means losing some political representation back home. For example, Americans abroad can still vote in their home states – but it’s not as though any senators or representatives feel particularly beholden to the expat constituency.
Not so for the 2.5 million French citizens living overseas: Article 24 of the French Constitution specifically mandates they be represented in the legislature. So the French National Assembly divides the world – save North Korea, the disputed territory of Western Sahara, and, somewhat inexplicably, Bhutan – into 11 constituencies that each send one fully empowered legislator back to Paris.
French expats are also represented in the Senate, albeit indirectly. Voters elect 442 “advisers to French citizens abroad” to serve six-year terms as a kind of community liaison between ordinary expats and the local French Embassy or consulate (you might recall one of these folks was recently kidnapped in Niger). Of that body, 90 are elected to sit on the Assembly of French Citizens Abroad, a long-standing committee that meets four times a year to advise the French government on foreign affairs. They then meet with 68 separately elected “consular delegates” to choose 12 senators with full lawmaking powers.
Complicated, sans doute, but it means that French citizens overseas have hundreds of elected representatives working on their behalf, whereas most other expats don’t have much of a voice back home. The graphic above illustrates where France draws the lines of its overseas legislative districts.
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GZERO's Ian Bremmer recently sat down with Eléonor Caroit, who represents French citizens in Latin America through one of the 11 National Assembly seats noted above, at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum. They discussed protecting democracy from some dangerous applications of artificial intelligence alongside Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. Check it out here.
French protests strengthen the far right & far left
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Venice, Italy, on the French protests and Boris Johnson's Partygate fallout.
What's really happening in France?
It's a very difficult situation. Protests all over the place. The political landscape is fractured. What's going to happen in the National Assembly is everyone's guess. And it is, for the moment, strengthen both the far right and the far left, with the center of French politics imploding. Difficult situation for Macron. Let's hope that he gets through it.
Have we now seen the end of the political career of Boris Johnson in the UK?
That remains to be seen. I don't think there's ever an end to that, more or less. But what has been happening is that Prime Minister Sunak has been able to get control of the Conservative Party. He got through the agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and it was only Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and a couple of the hard liners that voted against. So I think he is now in better control of the party and Boris Johnson is more isolated than he's been for a long time. Good news.
What We’re Watching: A big day for Macron, Taiwan’s friend list, Russia droning on
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...
Honduras unfriends Taiwan
(The People's Republic of) China swiped one of Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic chips this week when Honduras announced it'll change official recognition of China's government from Taipei to Beijing.
It's unclear why Honduran President Xiomara Castro — who promised to switch sides before she was elected in 2021 but then walked it back once in power — changed her mind again. Regardless, Honduras’ U-turn will surely overshadow Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit next week to Central America. Taiwan still has friends there in Belize and Guatemala, but Xi Jinping is spending big in the region to counter Taipei's diplomatic clout.
China, for its part, is paying more attention to the second leg of Tsai's trip. She also plans to travel to California to meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who finally decided against irking Beijing by emulating his predecessor with his own Taiwan visit.
Where’s the drone?
After the encounter between a Russian fighter jet and an American-made drone above the Black Sea, some have warned of a risk of an escalation in the Ukraine war that pits Russia directly against the US. That’s extremely unlikely.
The Biden administration, which on Thursday gave the US military the green light to release footage of the crash, has been clear and consistent that its support for Ukraine won’t include actions that bring US and NATO soldiers into direct conflict with Russian forces. And though Vladimir Putin has tried to persuade Russians and the world that Russia’s at war with the West, he has avoided any action that might push his military into a broader war it would quickly lose. (If Putin wanted a wider war, it would be very easy to start one.)
Nor is this incident particularly unusual. As the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted on Tuesday, “Russian forces have used coercive signaling against US and allied flights and naval vessels for decades in multiple theaters without triggering conflict.” The US will continue to use drones in the Black Sea to provide Ukraine with intel on Russian actions. But there is one aspect of this story we’re still watching: Can Russia recover the wreckage of the drone? If so, and it’s in decent condition, it might give Russian engineers access to advanced drone technologies they don’t already have.What We’re Watching: Launch of Russian offensive, China-Iran talks, Macron’s midnight deadline
The Russian offensive has begun
After much speculation about Russia’s next military steps, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that Russia has begun a new offensive in Ukraine. "We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities,” he said during a press conference in Brussels. Russia’s immediate goal, according to Eurasia Group analysis, is to gradually overwhelm outnumbered Ukrainian forces and take full control of the so-called Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, two of the Ukrainian regions Russia annexed last September. The early timing of this new escalation suggests Russia hopes to make significant gains before powerful new weapons sent by the West arrive in Ukraine. It’s also possible that Ukrainian forces will respond to Russia’s incremental escalation by trying not only to repel Russian attacks but to advance south to cut the land bridge Russian forces established last year between the Donbas region and Crimea. The bottom line: This new Russian offensive will offer the first true test of military strength since Moscow mobilized 300,000 more troops last fall. The world will learn a lot about whether the Russian army has greatly improved its training, weaponry, and ability to coordinate a large-scale operation.
Raisi heads to China in bid to deepen ties
Ebrahim Raisi is bringing one hefty entourage to Beijing this week on the first visit by an Iranian president to the Middle Kingdom in 20 years. With Iran’s economy reeling from western sanctions over its nuclear program, its shipment of drones to Russia for the war in Ukraine, and its brutal crackdown on protesters following the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini, Tehran hopes to foster economic growth by deepening trade ties with China. Raisi’s main goal is to implement a sweeping 25-year cooperation agreement the two countries signed in 2021 that includes economic and security cooperation. He is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and talks about reviving the Iranian nuclear deal are expected. The countries have grown closer in recent years – China remains Iran’s top trading partner, and Beijing has supported Tehran’s successful bid to join the Shanghai Cooperation Association and even supports the country’s efforts to join the powerful BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The push for greater cooperation comes despite a recent tussle over China’s support for negotiations to settle a territorial dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over three islands Tehran has controlled since the 1970s. We’ll be watching to see whether Xi and Raisi have any big announcements this week.
Macron vs. Midnight
Reforming France’s unsustainably generous pension system is the single biggest policy priority for President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. The bean counters say it has to happen, but the protesters on the streets say the move isn’t exactly popular. Well, now it’s crunch time: Debate on the first reading of the reform bill in the lower house of parliament must end by the stroke of midnight this Friday. Facing staunch rejection from trade unions and the left, Macron’s centrist minority government is hoping to pull along a more or less reliable group of center-right MPs in support of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030. But a number of those deputies are already asking for big concessions, including waiving the new retirement age for anyone who worked even a single month in their teens (that’s most people). Procedural quirks give the government some leverage: Unless MPs explicitly vote NON, the reforms would return to the Senate, where they have strong support. The clock is ticking …What We’re Watching: An encore for French protesters, Zelensky’s growing wish list, Weah’s reelection bid
Round Two: French pension reform strikes
For the second time in a month, French workers held mass protests on Tuesday against the government’s proposed pension reform, which would raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. Organized by the country’s eight big trade unions, authorities say as many as 1.27 million protesters hit the streets nationwide, bringing Paris to a standstill and closing schools throughout France. (Unions say the number was higher.) Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron is sticking to his guns, saying that incrementally raising the national retirement age by 2030 is crucial to reducing France’s ballooning deficit. (Currently, 14% of France’s public spending goes toward its pension program – the third-highest of any OECD country.) But for Macron, this is about more than just economics; his political legacy is on the line. Indeed, the ideological chameleon came to power in 2017 as a transformer and tried to get these pension reforms done in 2019, though he was ultimately forced to backtrack. But as Eurasia Group Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman points out, protesters’ “momentum is the key” and could determine whether legislators from the center-right back Macron or get swayed by the vibe on the street. This would force him to go at it alone using a constitutional loophole, which never makes for good politics. More demonstrations are planned for Feb.7 and Feb. 11.“To give me liberty, give me jets”
“Thanks for the tanks. Now we need jets.” That’s the message Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has for his country’s Western allies. Poland and the Baltics have been predictably supportive. The French, British, and Dutch have said “let’s discuss it.” Early indications from Washington and Berlin are less positive. Zelensky’s latest set of maximalist requests set off a lively debate within your GZERO team meeting, with compelling arguments on both sides. Argument 1: The guy is president of a country fighting a war for survival. It’s not his job to make life easy for American and European decision-makers; it’s to eject Russia from Ukraine, and he needs the best Western weapons to do that. Every day, innocent people in his country die. He should ask for more than everything he needs to make it stop. Argument 2: That’s all true, but there are already voters in the US and Europe who wonder how expensive (and dangerous) escalating support for Ukraine might become with a nuclear-armed power on the other side. Zelensky must understand that the elected leaders in these countries have to listen to these voters. If his demands seem exorbitant and unending, Zelensky might be doing more harm than good. We’ll be watching to see how the West responds to his latest ask.
Weah running for Liberian re-election
Former soccer star George Weah confirmed this week that he'll seek a second — and final — term as Liberia's president in the October election. Weah swept to power in 2018 after beating VP Joseph Boakai in a landslide, promising to rid the country of corruption. Almost five years later, though, graft remains widespread, with Liberia ranking 142nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2022 corruption perceptions index, and last year the US slapped sanctions on Weah's own chief of staff over multiple graft scandals. The president has also come under fire for doing little to address high inflation and food shortages related to Russia's war in Ukraine. More recently, Weah got flak for going on a two-month foreign trip — including a stop in Qatar to watch his son, Timothy, play for the US at the soccer World Cup — while most Liberians live in poverty. Still, Weah, the only African to win the coveted Ballon d'Or award for world's best player, has the one thing that all the opposition candidates lack: name recognition.
If you're a soccer fan and his name doesn't ring a bell, check out this FIFA video to discover how damn good Weah was in his prime.
Russia's resilient economy won't fall apart anytime soon
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How badly has the Russian economy been affected from the war in Ukraine?
Well, I mean, badly in the sense that half of Russian military capabilities, uh, in terms of things like ammunition and ballistic missiles and, you know, even standing army that's capable has been chewed up by a year of war. So Russia is gonna have to now rebuild that, and that does mean that their exports to other countries, they were the second largest defense export in the world, is gonna seriously take a hit. But near-term, less than 4% GDP contraction in 2022, which means that Russia's position of having all of these critical resources that everyone else in the world still really needs gives them a lot of resilience in terms of their economy. They're not gonna fall apart any time soon.
Why is a US four-star general warning about a potential war with China in 2025?
Probably because that particular military official does not have direct accountability over China. This was a classified report that people have been talking about, and as a consequence it made it to the public. And if it bleeds it leads, especially if it's about war with China, because there are so many people that wanna talk about headlines that we could be in war with China. And so, you find thousands of people that say, "No, we don't think it's gonna happen." One that says, "I think it will by 2025." That's what everybody asks about. Deeply misleading in terms of your following and consumption of the media. And if you wanna not panic, GZERO is a better place to go than that random military official.
Given widespread opposition, how does Macron expect to pass pension reform in France?
Very noisily. He's only trying to add a couple of years to the age. Previous presidents have failed in their efforts. He is taking on massive popular opposition, labor forces that are very well organized, unlike in the US, unlike in a lot of other European states, but ultimately, they need this. The demographic's life expectancy continues to increase in France, unlike the United States in recent years, and as a consequence that means people have to work longer before they get fully paid for pensions. And the French government is trying to make good on that as a fiscal reform. On balance, very likely that Macron gets it done with support from the center and center right. He should have enough in parliament to get it past. If not, he's in serious trouble, basically becomes a lame-duck presidency with a few years left. But we suspect he's likely to make that happen.
That's it for me. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Macron’s big gamble
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.
There are sound economic reasons for Macron’s move. Currently, almost 14% of France’s public spending goes toward its pension scheme, the highest of any OECD country after Greece and Italy. And if Macron doesn’t intervene, the byzantine pension system will likely be €10 billion in the red each year from now until 2032. Meanwhile, France’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at a record high, while growth is expected to be sluggish this year.
Consider that at 62, France has the lowest retirement age in the European Union. Average life expectancy is now around 30 years higher than in 1945, when France’s social security scheme was first established, though the pension program has evolved in recent decades to reflect an expanding workforce. Still, today, a French man will spend an average of 23.5 years hanging out in his armchair post-retirement, according to The Economist, while retired women will live 3.5 years on top of that. As time goes on, this nonworking cohort will become even more of a drag on state resources.
The political gamble of a lifetime. Macron has made pension reform a lynchpin of his domestic policy, vowing to get it done at all costs. The tricky thing for him, however, is that he can’t rely on much goodwill from voters because he’s not very popular (he won the presidency in April with just 38.5% of the total vote.)
Making matters worse, around 70% of French voters oppose raising the retirement age. Indeed, many public sector employees – railway workers, for instance – say they’ve been willing to accept lower wages knowing that the payoff would be a decent and early retirement.
There’s also a big cultural component to it all. French workers work to live and often poke fun at their American friends for having … unhealthy work habits. As a result, French workers have long viewed early retirement as something akin to a national right.
Prepare for pandemonium. Macron is not the first president to try and make changes to French labor rights and pensions – and it’s not his first bite at the apple. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac’s proposal to cut back on social welfare schemes led to a general strike that forced the government to walk back its plan. Similar protests broke out when Macron first attempted pension reform in 2019, but the plan was ultimately abandoned due to le coronavirus.
This time, the timing is also problematic, says Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group. “Some government officials fear that popular hatred of pension reform will combine with anger over rising food and energy prices to bring hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets.”
Still, Rahman says, Macron is gambling that “patient education on the facts and the fait accompli of a lightning enactment of the reform” – which could be done as soon as March – “will cool tempers and allow the minority government to claim its first significant, legislative achievement.”
What happens now? Macron should get enough support from the center-right Republican Party – which has long pushed for raising the retirement age – to get this bill over the finish line by spring. If they don't come through, however, the president can use a constitutional loophole to pass the law without a legislative vote.
Still, it won’t be easy. Union leaders have already planned a nationwide strike for Jan.19, saying it’ll be the start of a “strong mobilization.” Given the French penchant for protests, prepare for all out chaos.
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