Macron peers into the abyss as protesters step up the pressure on pensions

Two weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron was deeply unpopular with a good two thirds of the French people, who wanted nothing to do with his plan to raise the age at which they receive their pensions from 62 to 64. But the President believed he was on top of the situation and would ride out the storm, and most commentators, including this one, agreed. 

That was before he decided to press ahead with his reform without putting it to a vote in the National Assembly. Having been persuaded that his minority administration faced defeat at the hands of a united Opposition, he invoked article 49.3 of the Constitution, which, in the event of legislative deadlock, permits the Government to pass Bills into law, subject only to scrutiny by the Constitutional Council. 

What followed was grimly predictable. Strikes and street protests which had begun to look as if they were losing support across the country gained suddenly in strength, like a hurricane reinvigorated after passing over a warm stretch of ocean. 

The result was catastrophic for Macron, and for France. A state of intermittent anarchy, choreographed by the trade unions, has taken over from any kind of political discourse. Demonstrations reminiscent of the evenements of 1968 have brought normal life to a halt, throttling the economy and pushing not only Macron, but his government and the entire political élite onto the sidelines.

Violence, fomented by the so-called Black Blocs – extremists bent on overturning the existing order –  has become a commonplace, as has the brutal response of the police. There is no sign of an end to the chaos, which has brought together workers from all walks of life, as well as students as young as 16 and the elderly, the latter anxious to show their solidarity with the generations below. 

Outsiders like to point to the fact that the Macron plan is moderate in the extreme. It would leave the existing pension system more or less as it is, only better funded so that it is proof against the threat of bankruptcy. If adopted, French workers would still be the most coddled in Europe, receiving bloated pensions a good two years before their counterparts just about everywhere else, including Britain and Germany  

What observers miss is that the people know this but don’t care. As far as they are concerned, the state has a sacred obligation to look after them in old age and if this means taxing the rich until the pips squeak, so be it. If the reform package had gone through parliament, they might, reluctantly, have backed off. They are weary and in a majority of cases socially conservative. But if Macron, as the least-trusted and least liked post-war president, refuses to give ground, then maybe, just maybe, they will turn to regicide  

The current surge of unrest is not, at base, about the age at which the French can punch out for the last time. It is more a combination of frustration and rage about the current condition of France. Three years of lockdowns followed by 12 months of rampant inflation have created the perfect conditions for what Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally has called a “social explosion”. 

People complain that they have been excluded from the decision-making process. They feel that the Government has lost all connection with the governed and is ready to impose its solutions to problems, however real, that leave them worse off while pandering to the rich. 

Marooned in the Élysée Palace, the President is like a medieval monarch under siege. In office but not in power is the phrase that could have been coined specifically to describe his predicament. He has only two choices – to forge ahead regardless as the waters rise around him, or to pause his reform Bill pending some form of mediation, as demanded by the unions. 

Macron rejected mediation during the build-up to yesterday’s latest round of protests. Instead, he has requested a speedy decision by the Constitutional Council, a nine-strong body made up of the Great and Good periodically appointed by the President, Senate and National Assembly. If the Council, predicated on the maintenance of national stability, pronounces the reform Bill legitimate, Macron will feel vindicated. But whatever the verdict, it is certain that the unions and protesters will step up the pressure, using strikes and rallies to wear down the police and further hollow out the President’s remaining authority. 

Such, though, is the status of the presidency under the Fifth Republic that Macron may decide to pivot away from the retirement issue, declaring it a dead letter due to the inadequacy of the people, and towards a complete new line of attack. It is said that he sees the current impasse as evidence for the need not for the reform of pensions, but of the system itself. The current quasi-monarchial set up, devised by and for De Gaulle in 1958, has in the eyes of many run its course, and the clamour for a Sixth Republic, according more power to the Assembly and less to the Élysée (after him), is starting to build. 

For the Jupiter President, such a development could be the perfect way of avoiding his worst nightmare – an ignominious retreat into banquets and state receptions. A new constitution, with his name attached, would be a legacy worthy of his sense of grandeur, allowing him to quit the stage in 2027 as a Great Man and servant of the people. 

Quite how he would achieve this is something else entirely. The French for those taking part in a street demonstration is le cortège, and it is difficult not to see the protesters, with their flags and placards, as a funeral procession. Out of weakness came forth strength is a saying that has yet to enter the language. But at least constitutional change is something for the President to think about as his exhausted police charge once more into the breach and the people proclaim the Street as the one functioning branch of French democracy.  

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