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Found at: codevoid.de:70/cnn?/2023/03/20/opinions/macron-pension-reform-protests-andelman


		
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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Opinion: Paris is still burning, but Macron survives by a hair
By David A. Andelman
Updated:
3:36 PM EDT, Mon March 20, 2023
Source: CNN
An American visitor to Paris emailed me after her stroll Thursday
night: “I was walking home from dinner in rue du Cirque when I saw
the cars on fire. At Rue Royale, they were hurling tear gas. To get to
my hotel in the Rue des Capucines, the street was on fire from both
ends! Is Paris burning? In my street YES!! Now in my room I can smell
smoke.”
France is burning — Paris particularly, the city that is already
gearing up to host . And the nation’s hitherto Teflon president
appears caught in the middle of a host of competing political currents
and the nation’s fiscal realities. But don’t count Emmanuel Macron
out — not yet. Not that his most die-hard political opponents
aren’t circling on all sides across the vast French political
spectrum.
From the far-right acolytes of Marine Le Pen to the far left of
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (unbowed) party, the
political sharks are all smelling blood on the water, even though the
next elections aren’t for another four years.
At issue is Macron’s decision that the nation needs to bite the
bullet and — which would still leave it in the . At the current 62
years, only Slovenia at 60 is lower. since the retirement age in France
rose to 62 from 60, the average life expectancy has also risen by two
years to 83 from 81, according to .
Not surprisingly, the moment of the to their treasured pension system
two months ago, the French began to protest. When the measure reached
the halls of Parliament, in earnest, walking off their jobs in a
time-tested manner that has all too often proved both utterly
disruptive to life and at the same time somewhat successful in
moderating political behavior — as the case has been since down to
the movement more than .
Buses, subways and public works across France shuddered to a halt,
barricades went up in streets and were set ablaze. Garbage collectors
walked off, protesting the rise in t — among the many exceptions for
earlier full retirement due to the nature of their jobs. have piled up
on the streets of Paris — a pungent smorgasbord for the city’s
that, among the world’s most prolific, is said to be thriving.
Of course, this is not the first such conflagration Macron has
weathered. The yellow vest movement sent French demonstrators into the
streets, troubled by rising fuel prices. Macron calculated, rightly,
that the French eventually lose patience with extended strikes and
unrest. That worked before. Macron met with union leaders, addressed
the nation, laid out the costs and that were a core of the protests.
It’s not unreasonable Macron could find a similar path out of this
crisis, though the stakes are higher.
But pensions have long been a flashpoint for the French who are
congenitally reluctant to give up any of a host of such traditional
perks, some in the 17th century. Dancers in the Paris Opera can still
retire with . Much of today’s current pension structure dates to the
post-World War II .
Ironically, it was de Gaulle who also provided Macron with the tools
— dangerous though they might be to his political future — to ram
through the pension reform that he believes is vital to the survival of
the French economic system. The constitution that de Gaulle insisted
upon as a condition for him to return to office in 1958 and rescue the
country from a morass of weak, revolving-door governments, contained .
It gives the French President the right to push a bill through the
National Assembly without submitting to a vote. The provision has been
invoked on , according to official records of the French republic.
As it happens, it has already been invoked under Macron’s prime
minister, , more times than under any of her 15 predecessors except for
one — , who used 49.3 some 28 times against an utterly hostile
Parliament. Even de Gaulle’s three prime ministers only invoked the
provision 10 times in 10 years.
This same Article 49.3, however, carries with it a potentially
guillotine-like provision. — one by the Le Pen faction and the other
by a coalition of moderates.
clearing the way for Macron’s pension reforms to be implemented. The
broader centrist motion failed by just nine votes out of 577 members of
Parliament, while Le Pen’s motion won only 94 votes. and her
government will continue in power. Macron, of course, does have the
right to dissolve Parliament and call for another election. His
presidency is secure for another four years.
By using the constitution, Macron bestowed a marvelous gift on his own
plurality, indeed really any members of Parliament who might have even
considered voting for the pension reform, by removing the need for them
to declare themselves publicly for a deeply unpopular piece of
legislation.
While the President is term-limited out of standing for election again
in four years, members of the National Assembly must go before voters.
In theory, this gives enormous power to the political extremes —
supporters of Le Pen and Mélenchon, respectively on the far right and
extreme left — to shape any future government or even stand for
election themselves on a platform that much of the French people seem
to embrace wholeheartedly: no pension reform, or even a rollback to a
62-year retirement age.
There still remains an appeal to the nation’s constitutional council,
which opponents have immediately filed. The moment the vote was
announced, demonstrations broke out across Paris, with tear gas being
launched by police. And opponents have threatened a nationwide general
strike for Thursday that would shut down the country. But the
fundamental question remains: Would France do better with its status
quo, a retirement age of 62? Not at all, in my view, nor in Macron’s.
The President is quite correct in pointing to the strains going forward
on the entire national budget. When the Fifth Republic was created in
1958, there were for every retiree. By 2020, that figure had fallen to
, and over the next decade, without an adjustment an increasingly aging
population will be relying on barely to fund each retiree’s pension.
The nation will likely be going increasingly into deficit, or taxes
will be forced to skyrocket.
France already spends on pensions, nearly double the . The French
budget deficit of is already nearly double the . And facing the war in
Ukraine, Macron still wants to boost the nation’s today.
For Macron and France’s partners and allies, the stakes may be even
higher. Once seen as the new leader of a united Europe, stepping into
that role with the departure of Angela Merkel, the powerful former
German chancellor, Macron is now mired in controversy at home. Still,
he and his success or failure to reform his nation’s pension system
could be a test case for a host of other countries facing aging
workforces and widening deficits.

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