(Paris) President Emmanuel Macron chose a showdown at the last moment and on Thursday pledged his government’s responsibility to pass without a vote in the Assembly his decried plan for pension reform in France, a thunderclap that could revive social protest.
“I engage the responsibility of my government on the entire bill,” asserted Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, raising her voice to pass over the boos and lazzis of the white-hot opposition deputies.
The unions reacted by announcing a one-day strike next Thursday, the ninth in a long series since mid-January, which so far has not bent the government.
Denouncing a “denial of democracy”, they called for rallies this weekend.
A few thousand demonstrators waving flags of unions or left-wing parties gathered at Place de la Concorde after the announcement, facing many police blocking the bridge leading to the National Assembly.
PHOTO PASCAL ROSSIGNOL, REUTERS
A few thousand people demonstrated late Thursday afternoon at Place de la Concorde in Paris.
The rally was dispersed around 3 p.m. (Eastern time) by law enforcement, who made 217 arrests.
Dans l’ouest du pays, à Rennes et à Nantes, des manifestations violentes ont éclaté, avec notamment des tirs de mortiers vers les forces de l’ordre, et des dégradations urbaines.
Jeudi était le jour J pour cette réforme cruciale pour la crédibilité politique d’Emmanuel Macron pendant son second mandat.
Au paroxysme de l’incertitude, à quelques minutes du début de la séance à l’Assemblée nationale, l’exécutif avait décidé de recourir à l’article 49.3 de la Constitution, qui permet de faire passer un projet de loi sans le soumettre au vote, en engageant la responsabilité du gouvernement.
Jusqu’ici, Emmanuel Macron avait fait savoir qu’il ne voulait pas y recourir et qu’il préférait un vote des députés, alors que sa coalition n’a pas de majorité absolue à l’Assemblée nationale et devait compter sur les votes des députés du parti de la droite traditionnelle, Les Républicains (LR).
Charivari à l’Assemblée
Mais aux termes d’innombrables tractations, de fébriles calculs et de multiples réunions de crise, l’exécutif a considéré qu’aller au vote était trop risqué sur ce projet qui recule de 62 à 64 ans l’âge de départ à la retraite.
« Jusqu’à la dernière minute nous avons tout mis en œuvre » pour essayer d’aller au vote, a-t-elle déclaré jeudi soir sur la chaîne TF1.
Ce recours au 49.3 constitue un revers de l’avis de nombreux commentateurs politiques, le journal de gauche Libération évoquant en une un « crash politique ».
Tous les ténors de l’opposition ont fustigé cette décision.
« Le Parlement aura jusqu’au bout été bafoué, humilié » a dénoncé le chef de file des députés communistes Fabien Roussel.
« C’est un constat d’échec total de ce gouvernement […] and for Emmanuel Macron,” said far-right (RN) leader Marine Le Pen.
Motions of censure
The government of M.me Borne is now exposed to various motions of censure.
The deputies of the presidential coalition have a relative majority, and it would be necessary that the deputies, from the far left to the far right, agree to put the government in a minority and that LR votes them too.
If the RN declared that it would vote “all the motions wherever they come from”, the president of the Republicans Éric Ciotti however warned that his party would not vote “none”.
However, a sling is not to be excluded, the deputy LR Aurélien Pradié explaining for example that he was going to “ask the question” during the weekend.
Mme Le Pen announced that she would table one, as did Julien Bayou, an ecologist deputy from the left-wing Nupes coalition, who mentioned a “transpartisan” censure motion.
He also accused the government of being “ready to put the country on fire and blood”, while Mme Borne said she was on TF1 “very shocked” by the attitude of certain opposition deputies, evoking the “screams” on the benches of Nupes, the blows on the desks on the side of the RN.
“They want chaos in the assembly and in the street,” she warned.
” Second breath ” ?
“In the street, this will give a second wind to the mobilization”, anticipates the expert Antoine Bristielle, of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, interviewed by AFP.
“The 49.3 in the imagination of the French is synonymous with brutality, it is the feeling that the government is not listening”, according to him.
“This reform is a shipwreck,” commented CFDT leader Laurent Berger.
Since January 19, hundreds of thousands of French people have demonstrated against this reform, against a backdrop of renewable strikes, like that of the Parisian garbage collectors.
The sidewalks of the French capital, one of the most touristic cities in the world, are thus in places covered with mountains of smelly garbage cans.
The various opinion polls show that the French are mostly hostile to it, even if the number of demonstrators in the streets and of strikers has stagnated or declined over time.
The French government has chosen to raise the legal retirement age in response to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest.
“France has a system […] which is not viable,” Spanish Socialist Minister of Social Security José Luis Escriva said on Thursday.
According to him, “not having tackled the problem in time and having done so as we have done, it must now adopt a […] which generates social resistance.
