Macron has confirmed the French people’s worst fears about him

His actions will exacerbate cynicism and mistrust of authorities and elites, writes Borzou Daragahi

Nationwide protests against the reforms have turned violent (AP)

French voters did not re-elect Emmanuel Macron last year with a nearly 60 per cent majority for his social, economic, and political vision. He was in large part re-elected in spite of them.

Voters re-elected him in a landslide because the alternative was Marine Le Pen, a Kremlin-backed far-right ideological descendant of Nazi collaborators. As he acknowledged during his victory speech during a rare moment of humility, a number of French people voted for him “not to support my ideas, but to stop the ideas of the far right”.

At that moment, a nation emerging from the trauma of the Covid pandemic and the shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not grant him the authority to make any bold moves, as shown by his loss of a parliamentary majority two months later. French voters certainly did not give him an explicit mandate to revamp France’s pensions programme by increasing the age of retirement, plunging the country into chaos, and prompting crippling waves of public strikes and street violence.

France needs pension reform. But Macron is the wrong guy implementing the wrong package with the wrong message at the wrong time. Streamlining public finances is worthwhile. But it must not be done in a way that places almost all the burdens on the poor and middle class.

Like many western nations, France’s demographics have been shifting for decades. An increasingly agile, ageing population is living longer off of retirement benefits payments bankrolled by dwindling pools of younger workers.

At 62, France’s retirement age is one of the earliest in the western world, and many economists agree that it is economically unsustainable. Paris wants to lower France’s pension expenditures of nearly 15 per cent of GDP to bring them more in line with continental standards of around 11.5 per cent.

Macron’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 is reasonable, and includes many provisions to dampen the impact on the infirm, disabled and those employed in physically challenging public sector positions.

But the timing is terrible. The French are now reeling from inflation that hit a record 7.3 per cent in February.  Wages are just not advancing fast enough. The poor and middle class already feel they are bearing the brunt of years of austerity measures. Macron tried and failed to push through pension reform in his first term, prompting the biggest nationwide strikes in recent history; and that was before Covid, the yellow-vest movement and QAnon-fuelled conspiracy theories infected French political discourse.

Some 70 per cent of French oppose the reforms, and even more support the protests. Some French people also do not see the urgency. French pension expenses are high, but still lower than Italy or Greece.

It would take an adept and savvy politician perhaps with large grassroots party support and deep institutional knowledge of the country’s labour sector, administrative and political nuances to get the French to agree to pension reforms. Such a figure might barnstorm the country to win over sceptics, the way Barack Obama convinced Americans to go along with healthcare reform.

But Macron is no Obama. He bungled the rollout. He clumsily tried to sell the reform as progressive, while courting the right to vote for the measure. Macron’s attempt to paint a big change that will burden the working class as somehow for the benefit of the working class was insulting and infuriating.

“This is a right-wing reform that they sold with a left-wing narrative,” says Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of Europe at the Eurasia Group, a consultancy. “The argument was very convoluted, that it is about justice and fairness. In retrospect, they should have stuck to blood, sweat, and tears.”

Macron has no real political party or deep grassroots support. His political “movement” has always been essentially a media operation. When he introduced the pension package his popularity was at an abysmally low 36 per cent, and it has only fallen more. Macron knew well the package would trigger unrest and stiff resistance.

Predictably, once it reached France’s fractured parliament it failed to draw enough support from the centre-right Republicaines who long advocated raising the retirement age. Rather than risk defeat on the floor, Macron changed course. He enacted the reform by executive fiat, the statute called 49.3, triggering a pair of no-confidence votes that his government managed to survive only by nine lawmakers.

The law must still be approved by France’s constitutional court, which likely has to approve it.  But it has already unleashed chaos on the streets as disciplined protests and well-planned labour actions gave way to anarchistic violence. Videos showing brutal French cops against peaceful demonstrators have prompted statements of condemnation from across the world.

Macron appears unworried, even as his own supporters are nervous about the political and social impact. “He is quite ready to stare down the street,” says Rahman.

Macron believes the French pensions system has to change, and that current public spending is not sustainable. He has long believed that the French must work longer and harder.

France’s parliamentary far-right and far-left blocs were likely never going to grant the centrist Macron an easy win on pension reform. But parliament is not everything. Macron owed his victory last year to French leftists and centre-leftists, and there might have been a way to sell the public and perhaps some members of parliament on pension reform if he had coupled the package with one also hitting France’s most elite corporations and the super-rich with higher taxes.

Macron in fact has ruled out any tax increases, arguing they would make France less competitive. In fact, while small businesspeople and property owners are shaken down aggressively by French tax authorities, the country’s biggest corporate barons and oligarchs have been paying little in taxes under Marcon. In 2021, some of the country’s top corporations paid nothing or next to nothing in taxes.

With his use of executive fiat to push through a major policy change, his refusal to shift course on taxes for the super-rich and his government’s violence against protesters, Macron confirms all the worst caricatures about himself. His actions will exacerbate cynicism and mistrust of authorities and elites. Macron will likely get his cherished reform. France will pay a huge price.