Macron wants democratic reform, the French people not so much

One thing at a time, Monsieur le President. Such would be the advice most people would give Emmanuel Macron as he waits to see if his pension reform legislation, which raises the state retirement age from 62 to 64, can be put on the statute books without provoking a general uprising. 

But no. Macron isn’t listening. He seems to think he has soixante-quatre in the bag, which requires, on his part, either extraordinary optimism or, just as likely, a recrudescence of the arrogance which characterised the early days of his first term in the Élysée. 

So, instead of acting as a necessary midwife to his reform Bill, its umbilical still attached to the government of prime minister Élisabeth Borne, he has moved on to loftier goals. 

According to reports, the President is ready to demolish the political architecture that has supported French democracy throughout the Fifth Republic. In pursuit of what he has chosen to label “popular sovereignty,” he would like to push through the following changes: 

• a reduction in the number of deputies in the National Assembly (currently 577 – 73 fewer than the number of MPs in the House of Commons) 

• a cut in the number of senators (elected by regional and departmental councils as well as citizens living abroad) 

• the suppression of at least one layer of local government (commune, department, region or agglomeration 

• the introduction of a form of proportional representation for elections to the Assembly 

• the creation of a Supreme Court as the final court of appeal in civil and criminal cases, with the power to strike down rulings of the existing cour de cassation, or high court of appeal 

•  a redrawing (yet again) of France’s internal frontiers, which, as things stand, divide the country into thirteen administrative regions and five overseas departments 

It is not hard to see how difficult any of these reforms, let alone all of them, would be to enact. In France, where institutional change is widely perceived as an attack on liberty, getting anything done is challenging, often impossible. 

An opinion poll published this week by the conservative paper Le Figaro indicates levels of support for some of the mooted measures but a distinct lack of enthusiasm for others. 

Tellingly, while 78 per cent of those polled by Figaro agree that there are too many deputies and senators and 69 per cent are ready to endorse PR, only 29 per cent of respondents are in favour of pressing ahead with reforms as a matter of urgency and fully 25 per cent oppose any change to the existing system. If the poll is to be believed, just over half of the French (51 per cent) consider their country to be more democratic than its neighbours, including the UK, against 47 per cent who judge there to be a democratic deficit. 

Macron would do well to heed the poll, most obviously on the question of local government reform. The French are deeply wedded to the idea of the commune and the department. Communes have existed in various forms from time immemorial. They can be huge, like Paris, or tiny, like the village in Brittany from which this piece is being written. Departments, of which there are currently 101 (97 in metropolitan France, the rest overseas), date back to the 17th century but owe much of their form and importance to the revolutionary settlement of 1790. 

In 2014, then President François Hollande proposed abolishing the powers of the departments and subsuming their responsibilities into that of the regions. It didn’t happen. Hardly anyone who mattered was in favour. Instead, Hollande reduced the number of regions from 22 to 13, a reform that Macron now reportedly wishes to unpick. 

But how serious is he? Does he honestly believe that France, after the constraints of Covid, is ready for a democratic upheaval or is he simply initiating a national conversation that could rumble on for years after he departs the presidency in 2027. It is hard to say. Like many leaders priding themselves on their intellect and unique insights, Macron appears to believe that the French are unworthy of him and have let him down. Ideally, he would replace them with a different electorate infused with a higher vision of how government should function. 

For now, as he waits to see if his pension Bill is finally adopted and accepted, however reluctantly, by the people, he is busy with Ukraine and Africa (which he is visiting this week for what must be the umpteenth time), exhibiting displacement activity on a characteristically global scale. He will also, given that he is still just 45, be looking ahead to the next phase of his career, which could see him relaunched in some elevated capacity in the EU, or even in the US, either as a top banker, an academic or (who knows?) secretary-general of the United Nations. 

Popular sovereignty might have to wait a little longer. 

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