Why so many people in France are protesting over pensions?

The Paris protests during Macron’s Yellow Vest era: the consequences for France’s pension system and the long-term deficit of the French government

The pension reform is important for France’s future. He has argued that long-term deficits will hobble the country if nothing is done to address a discrepancy between the number of active workers who pay into the pension system and the number of retirees whose government pensions come out of it.

This isn’t the first conflagration that Macron has weathered. The yellow vest movement sent French demonstrators into the streets worried about 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 dropped fuel taxes 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.

Paris is expected to bear the most of the protests as most lines on the metro only run at the busiest times. The main education trade union FSU said Sunday that 120 schools would close for the day and 60% of primary school teachers would be on strike in the French capital.

France’s civil aviation authority, meanwhile, has asked airlines to reduce scheduled flights by 20% and 30% at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris respectively. Air France said about 20% of short-haul flights would be canceled, but long-haul services would be maintained. The airline cautioned, however, that “last-minute delays and cancellations cannot be ruled out.”

National railway operator SNCF said very few regional trains would operate and that four out of five trains on the TGV, France’s intercity high-speed rail service, would be canceled.

Les vecteurs de l’action des syndicates dans les pays arabes depuis le XXIeme siècle

Philippe Martinez, secretary general of the CGT, the biggest French union, said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear” and he expected “that the mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

The French began to protest when the first changes to their pension system were announced two months ago. When the measure was approved, the nation took to the streets in earnest, walking off their jobs in a time-tested manner that has all too often proved disruptive to life and at the same time somewhat successful in moderating political behavior.

The country came to a standstill on January 19 as arecord 1.3 million people took part in some kind of protest.

The pension legislation is needed to tackle a funding deficit but has angered the workers at a time when living costs are increasing.

If there is no opposition support, the government could use the powers of the French constitution, which allows it to push through budget related legislation without a parliamentary vote.

The latest plans are a much more straightforward attempt to balance the system’s finances by making the French work longer, an effort that the government acknowledges will be difficult for some but that it insists is necessary.

France has one of the lowest rates of pensioners at risk of poverty in Europe, and a net pension replacement rate — a measure of how effectively retirement income replaces prior earnings — of 74 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, higher than the O.E.C.D. and European Union averages.

But the government argues that rising life expectancies have left the system in an increasingly precarious state. In 2000, there were 2.1 workers paying into the system for every one retiree; in 2020 that ratio had fallen to 1.7, and in 2070 it is expected to drop to 1.2, according to official projections.

The Paris School of Economics has an economist named Bozio, he said there was no danger of anexplosion of the deficit. He said that once you have said the system is not in danger or is about to get bad, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and Paris correspondent for CBS News. His views in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

Is Paris burning? Now I can smell smoke in the streets of Paris, whose prime minister hasn’t declared himself publicly during the last 10 years

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. The street was going up in flames to get to my hotel. Is Paris burning? In my street YES!! Now in my room I can smell smoke.”

Even though the next elections are not for another four, political sharks are still smelling blood in the water.

Buses, subways and public works across France were stopped and barricades went up in the streets. Garbage Collectors walked off their jobs to protest a rise in their retirement age from 57 to 59. There are thousands of tons of garbage on the streets of Paris, and the population of rats is among the most prolific in the world.

As it happens, it has already been invoked 11 times under Macron’s prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, more times than under any of her 15 predecessors except for one — Michel Rocard, who used 49.3 some 28 times against an utterly hostile Parliament. In 10 years, de Gaulle’s prime ministers only invoked the provision 10 times.

Effectively, the various political currents coursing through the halls of Parliament have some tough decisions to make. Macron has 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.

It is not possible at the moment since the unpopularity of the pension plan means the alliance would not receive a majority of seats. He would need to appoint a prime minister from the majority side to implement policies that deviated from the president’s priorities if another party won.

The far-right National Rally pension bill will not pass without a vote in the French National Assembly as predicted by the late-time violence in Paris

The first motion, put forward by the far-right National Rally, is not expected to receive much support beyond the party’s own ranks. There is a broad alliance of opposition parties that supports the other filed by a small group of independent lawmakers.

While neither motion is likely to gain the necessary number of votes to pass, the situation is more tense in France and people are starting to wonder if a surprise outcome will happen.

The decision to push the bill through the National Assembly without a vote on Thursday caused angry protests all over the country that turned into violent confrontations between riot police and protesters.

The Paris police eventually banned protests last week on the Place de la Concorde and the nearby Champs-Élysées avenue, citing “risks of disturbances to public order” after two days of violent nighttime clashes between riot police and protesters who lit trash fires and threw cobblestones. The police presence resulted in dozens of protesters being arrested over the weekend.

Constituency offices of lawmakers favorable to the pension bill were also scrawled with graffiti and pelted with rocks. Garbage collector strikes are still going on in some areas.

“If the motion is not passed, people will continue to fight to reverse the reform,” said Raphaël Masmejean, 31, on Friday night in central Paris at the Place de la Concorde, where protesters had lit a large fire in view of the National Assembly building.

That pressure is especially high on representatives of the mainstream conservative Republican party. About half of the Republican lawmakers in the National Assembly — roughly 30 or so — would be needed to pass the no-confidence motion that was filed by independent lawmakers.

“All is in the hands of these 30-or-so Republicans who are hostile to the reform,” Charles de Courson, a high-profile independent lawmaker, told France Inter radio on Monday.

On Saturday night, protesters threw stones at the office of the Republican party president in Nice, on the French Riviera, and left a message scrawled on a wall: “The motion or the cobblestone.”

Anger and scorn about the no-confidence motion against the government after the Paris protests of May 11 – 24 hours after the first parliamentary protest

Some GOP lawmakers are in agreement. The party’s leadership, which backed the pension bill in exchange for some concessions, has said repeatedly that it did not want to topple the government, and most of the party’s lawmakers are expected to follow that line.

The no-confidence motion was supported by Aurélien Pradie, a Republican lawmaker from the rural Lot area who has become a leader of sorts for party rebels who oppose the pension bill.

The opposition has insisted that they do not have the ability to govern despite multiple no-confidence motions against the government. Bruno Le Maire said in an interview with the newspaper that the opposition was a “clownish carriage” of far-left, far-right and independent lawmakers.

One study by the Elabe polling institute published on Monday by the BFMTV news channel found that 68 percent of those surveyed felt “angry” about the decision to push the bill through without a vote, and that the same percentage wanted a no-confidence motion against the government to succeed.

In an interview with the newspaper, the head of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor said that the reform had been a disaster and he urged him not to implement it if it became law.

“We have gone from a feeling of scorn to a feeling of anger” because of the decision to push the bill through without a vote, Mr. Berger said, even as he condemned the violent outbursts that marred protests in Paris and other cities last week. A ninth protest has been called by labor unions, but they have not taken part in the weekend melees.

At the Place de la Concorde on Friday, Hélène Aldeguer, 29, called the decision to push the bill through without a vote “unbelievable and not surprising at the same time.”

The President of France’s Socialist Revolution and the Problem of Retirement in the Era of the Restoration of Democracy: After 40 Years, a Parody Photo Has Arrived

The President of France is depicted sitting on the garbage in a parody photo. It’s both a reference to the trash going uncollected with Paris sanitation workers on strike — and to what many French people think about their leader.

His move to force the pension reform bill through without a vote has upset the political opposition and may affect the government’s ability to pass legislation for the rest of his term.

The parody photo was hoisted by demonstrators after the bill was passed without a vote at the National Assembly.

In his first public comment on the issue since then, the 45-year-old leader expressed his wish for the bill to “reach the end of its democratic path in an atmosphere of respect for everyone,” according to a statement Sunday from his office provided to The Associated Press.

Now, Macron’s government has alienated citizens “for a long time” to come by using the special authority it has under Article 49.3 of the French Constitution to impose a widely unpopular change, said Brice Teinturier, deputy director general of the Ipsos poll institute.

He said the situation’s only winners are far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party, “which continues its strategy of both ‘getting respectable’ and opposing Macron,” and France’s labor unions. Le Pen was runner-up to Macron in the country’s last two presidential elections.

Macron repeatedly said he was convinced the French retirement system needed modifying to keep it financed. He says that increasing the tax burden would push investors away, and that decreasing the pensions of current retirees was not a realistic alternative.

The public displays of displeasure may weigh heavily on his future decisions. In recent days there have been protests in Paris and across the country that have been violent but not as violent as demonstrations and strikes previously organized by France’s major unions.

By the end of his second term, the French President wants to reduce France’s unemployment rate to 5% from 7.2%.

France’s strong presidential powers are a product of Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s wish to have a stable political system.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1164639232/emmanuel-macron-faces-no-confidence-votes-as-pressure-builds-from-pension-protes

A short note on the idea of dissolving the Assembly, reaffirming the need for retirement age down at 60 in the Nupes coalition

A lawmaker from the Nupes coalition said that the idea of dissolving the Assembly was a very good one.

“I believe it would be a good occasion for the country to reaffirm that yes, they want the retirement age down at 60,” Panot said. “The Nupes is always available to govern.”