Emmanuel Macron and his government are winning the pulse of the unions and the opposition in the street, although the long-term political price may be high. The French Senate, with a conservative majority, gave the green light on Saturday, in a session that ended almost at midnight, to the controversial and unpopular pension reform, the most important project of the second term of the current Elysée tenant.
The reform, which plans to delay the legal retirement age by two years, from 62 to 64, obtained 195 votes in favor and 112 against. This result was a relief for Macron and his team. It was a decisive step forward that anticipates, except for last-minute surprises, a probable approval of the reform by the National Assembly, this Thursday.
The legislative text must be analyzed and agreed upon this Wednesday at the joint mixed commission meeting between the Senate and the National Assembly. Their task is to agree on a final version that harmonizes the differences between the two approved texts, which are minimal. This commission is made up of fourteen members, seven from each chamber. Ten of them are known to be in favor of reform. The logical thing, then, is that they leave the final text ready for it to be voted on in both chambers on Thursday.
There is no total certainty that there will be a majority in the Assembly. Some deputies from Macron’s Renaissance party and allied groups are reticent, but there will be a lot of pressure to tame their rebellion and close ranks. There is too much at stake.
There are also doubts about a sector of the Los Republicanos (LR, traditional right) group. It is enough that two thirds of them vote in favor for the project to go ahead. In an article yesterday in Le Journal du Dimanche, the president of LR, Éric Ciotti, appealed to his people to support the initiative, considering it a necessity in terms of financial sustainability due to demographic trends and the aging of the population. “I will vote for the pension reform because I am a Gaullist,” he wrote. And Gaullism, against all odds, only has one demand, the best interest of the nation”. Ciotti took the opportunity to attack Macron for his mismanagement of this matter. Republicans try not to appear as the president’s saviors because they want his party to maintain its own profile going forward.
The process in the Senate was faster than expected. The Government activated article 44.3 of the Constitution, to shorten the procedure and force a single vote on the complete text, instead of doing it by articles and amendments. With this strategy, the term was shortened by at least one day. The Executive does not rule out resorting to another exceptional instrument, article 49.3 of the Constitution, if things get complicated in the National Assembly. That would allow the reform to be approved by decree. They want to avoid it at all costs, so as not to anger even more, but they do not exclude it completely.
The vote in the Senate took place at the end of a new day of demonstrations throughout the country, the seventh since the beginning of the year. The participation was clearly lower, a sign of the fatigue of the protest and the resignation of the opposing sectors to see that the parliamentary process advances and the Government does not intend to give in fundamentally.
Despite everything, the unions remain combative. Another national protest and strikes are called for Wednesday. “The party is not over,” warned the secretary general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), Laurent Berger, at the head of the union with the most affiliates and the historically most moderate.
In the political field, the left and the extreme right, opposed to the reform, meditate their strategy. The president of the far-right National Regroupment (RN, former National Front), Jordan Bardella, spoke yesterday of “discussions” in the National Assembly about the possibility of presenting a common motion of censure in the event that the Government resorted to article 49.3, a decision that would seem typical of an authoritarian system. Until now, the RN has adopted the position of waiting and seeing, knowing that social unrest is growing and, in the long run, feeding its electoral fishing grounds. Bardella expressed his solidarity with the demonstrations, although his party does not encourage his followers to take to the streets.
