by SERGE HALIMI
Last Thursday the French president urgently gathered his cabinet ministers to trigger Article 49.3 of the constitution. This is the only means still available to him to impose his pension reform, despite the opposition of parliament, the unions and the people.
A few weeks after Emmanuel Macron became president, one of his supporters, the current chairman of the National Assembly foreign affairs committee, summed up the economic and social orientation to come: ‘Objectively, the problems of this country require solutions favourable to high earners’ (1). Since then, the privileged have shown their gratitude to their benefactor: between the first round of the 2017 presidential election and the first round in 2022, Macron saw his support among the richest go from 34% to 48%. When in power, the left has rarely demonstrated such bravura in satisfying its voters.
As Macron has also increased his popularity among the over-65s during his presidency, it’s easy to gauge the extent of the ‘courage’ he boasts about as he attempts to convince the country to accept a pension ‘reform’ whose main victims will be the working classes, who overwhelmingly voted against him. While his challenge to welfare benefits will spare the wealthy, and pensioners (even the best-off), it will force workers, whose healthy life expectancy is ten years less than that of senior executives, to work for an additional two years (2). The finishing line for those who are so often left worn out, exhausted and broken by work is once again being pushed further away. Compulsory labour will eat up the time for rest, personal projects, or simply deciding what to commit to.
Why do this when there is no financial necessity? Because instead of improving crumbling hospitals and schools, the government has chosen to ‘reduce the burden of pension expenses’ on the national economy at a time when military spending is set to soar (the armed forces minister predicts the defence budget will double between 2017 and 2030). A civilisation with such priorities is so debased that, unlike what we saw in November-December 1995 – when there was a huge social movement that somewhat resembles the current one – even some of the media best disposed towards the government have had to (temporarily) suspend their criticism of the ongoing demonstrations.
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