Emmanuel Macron overacts on the international front to the point of disturbing his allies, as explained today in the International section. Domestic policy and foreign policy are communicating vessels. The resort to covering up domestic failures with successes on the global board is as old as politics itself. Augustus was already boasting about his victories on the battlefields of the empire when he was in trouble in Rome. And Macron urgently needs a shocker to relaunch his agonizing presidency. At the moment, he must be wondering what was more convenient for him: a slap in the face from the Constitutional Council that would uproot his pension reform and in the process de-ignite the protests in the streets, so that they would allow him to set the counter to zero, or, as it ended up happening, a decision that validates his plan but widens the gulf between the Elysée and public opinion to unknown extremes.
It is clear that in France everyone has lost: Macron has had to impose with decrees and anti-riots the increase in the retirement age and the French as a whole have said goodbye to part of what, in the eyes of many Europeans, was a privilege difficult to sustain in full withdrawal of the welfare state. What is not so obvious – it will still be some time before it can be determined – is whether this mobilization for the retirement age is a merely domestic issue, as it seems, or if, in fact, it is one of the first battles that are being waged in Europe in favor of what will be the great demand of the coming years: a universal basic income that will allow us to survive the massive destruction of jobs that will be caused by the new advances in artificial intelligence (AI). We probably still lack perspective to know. But in a few years – or months – we will be out of doubt.
The amalgam of claims that feeds the French mobilization, continuation of the yellow vests, goes beyond the age at which you can start collecting the pension. In the background, it is possible that the individual’s sense of helplessness in the face of hitherto unimaginable threats, from the climate crisis and the great migrations to the supplanting of employment by artificial workers of the latest generation, is underlying.
