Something is wrong with French democracy when, after two weeks of debate, the National Assembly does not even agree to vote on the key articles of the pension reform, the most important project of Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential term.
After a chaotic and very tense session, which concluded at midnight on Friday, the deputies went on winter vacation and left the reform completely up in the air. The text will now be discussed in the Senate to return later to the Lower House. The outcome of this great political struggle remains uncertain. Article 7, the decisive point of the reform, which delays the retirement age from 62 to 64 years, could not be voted on. The result would have given at least an idea about the real possibilities of the project going ahead or not.
“Trench warfare to the end,” he headlined Le Parisien. “Pensions, the great fiasco”, confirmed Libération, who spoke of “democratic bankruptcy”.
The face of the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, showed the weariness and irritation of the last few days. At the stroke of midnight, in his last turn to speak, Dussopt, fiery and hoarse, lashed out at La Francia Insumisa (LFI, radical left) for his obstructionism: “You, the insumis, have insulted me for fifteen days, but you don’t They have knocked it down and we are here to defend the reform”.
Before going home, the deputies had to vote on the motion of no confidence presented by the far-right Marine Le Pen. It was a pure formality because only the 89 representatives of the National Regrouping (RN) supported it. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne accused Le Pen of being an opportunist. According to Borne, the radical left and the extreme right are “two populisms” and “two faces of contempt for democracy.”
The painful spectacle of the National Assembly is an expression of the lack of consensus and the atmosphere of growing tension as a consequence of the results of last year’s presidential and legislative elections.
Macron’s victory, with more than 58% of the vote over Le Pen in the second round, was actually insufficient to impose his policy, even more so when the president’s supporters, the Renaissance party, lost their majority in the Assembly. The very top-down method of government does not work in those circumstances. Macron maintains that he received a popular mandate to implement his program, including pension reform, but the reality is more complex. The president obtained only 18.7 million votes out of a census of 48.7 million potential voters. 13.6 million abstained, 3 million voted blank or null, and 13.2 backed Le Pen. These figures explain, in part, the current conflict with pensions, the popular rejection and the successful union mobilization.
Neither scenario seems reassuring. A parliamentary defeat of the pension reform would be a catastrophe for Macron. A very narrow victory would not calm things down, and resorting to a decree to bypass Parliament would annoy them even more.