Macron’s anger toward the revolutionaries: the French crisis in Brussels, the Paris airport, and the rail system will be severely disrupted

Deprived of the absolute parliamentary majority he had in his first term, seeking new ways to connect with a restive nation, buffeted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and threats from one leftist leader to outdo the 1789 revolution, Mr. Macron seems hesitant. He has not lost his desire to remake the world.

Mr. Macron has been pushed into a defensive crouch because of his instinct to play offense. The price of gas and electricity have been capped at 120 percent by his government. It has called in workers from the refinery in order to break the strike that has led to long lines at gas stations.

French schools, airports and trains will face heavy disruption Tuesday for the sixth time this year, as unions galvanize people nationwide in protest against government plans to raise the retirement age for most workers.

Civil aviation authority in France has asked airlines to reduce flights at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris. 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.

Macron’s pension crisis confronts the economic crisis of the French Republic: An analysis based on an economist’s assessment of the needs for urgent action

In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, the secretary general of the CGT said that his unions are moving up a gear and will continue to grow until the government listens to workers.

But opponents dispute the need for urgency. Even the official body that monitors France’s pension system has acknowledged that there is no immediate threat of bankruptcy and that long-term deficits are hard to predict. Labor unions have accused Mr. Macron of rushing through the age increase without considering other ways of balancing the system.

The country was thrown into standstill and the Eiffel Tower was closed for visitors on January 19 after a huge number of people took part in demonstrations.

The government has said the pension legislation is necessary to tackle a funding deficit, but the reforms have angered workers at a time when living costs are rising.

If a motion passes, however, it would be a big blow for Macron: the pension bill would be rejected and his Cabinet would have to resign. In that case, the president would need to appoint a new Cabinet and find his ability to get legislation passed weakened.

The government acknowledges that it will be difficult for some but that it insists is necessary in balancing the system’s finances by making the French work longer.

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.

If the retirement age remains the same, the President is right to point to strains going forward on the national budget. When the Fifth Republic was created in 1958, there were more than four workers for every retiree. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 1.7 workers per retiree, and over the next decade, without an adjustment an increasingly aging population will be relying on barely 1.5 workers to fund each retiree’s pension. The nation will likely be going increasingly into deficit, or taxes will be forced to skyrocket.

Antoine Bozio, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, said that there was no short-term “explosion of the deficit” that needed to be addressed urgently. He said that it doesn’t mean that the system isn’t a problem in the long run if you’ve said that the system isn’t in danger.

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. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Is Paris burning? Burning or not burning? It has been invoked 11 times in the French parliament by Michel Rocard and Elisabeth Borne

An American visitor to Paris saw cars on fire when she was walking home from dinner. They were throwing tear gas at each other. The Rue des Capucines is on fire from both ends to get to my hotel. Is Paris burning? In my street YES!! I can smell smoke in my room.

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.

Public works were brought to a halt and barricades were set on fire in France. Garbage collectors walked off, protesting the rise in their retirement to 59 from 57 — among the many exceptions for earlier full retirement due to the nature of their jobs. More than 7,000 tons of garbage have piled up on the streets of Paris — a pungent smorgasbord for the city’s rat population that, among the world’s most prolific, is said to be thriving.

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. The three de Gaulle prime ministers only invoked the provision 10 times.

The President can only stand for re-election in four years, but members of the National Assembly must go before voters. This gives enormous power to the political extremes, supporters of Le Pen and the far right and extreme left alike, to shape the future government or even standing for election themselves on a platform that the majority of the French people seem to approve of: no pension reform.

If a no-confidence vote succeeds — as early as Monday — will they do better with a new prime minister, also appointed by Macron? For that matter, would France even do better with its status quo, a retirement age of 62? Not at all, in my view, nor in Macron’s.

The Paris National Rally, the motion or the cobblestone? Nighttime protests against a no-confidence motion in Paris and the riot police

The National Rally put forward the first motion, and it is not expected to receive a lot of support outside of the party. The other was filed by a small group of independent lawmakers and was backed by a broad alliance of opposition parties.

While neither motion is seen as likely to get the required number of votes — at least 287 — to succeed, anger against Mr. Macron has intensified, and speculation over a possible surprise outcome is rampant after three days of volatility and heightened tension in French politics.

The decision to move the bill through the Assembly without a vote set off angry protests across the country which have turned into violent confrontations between riot police and protesters.

The Place de la Concorde and the adjoining Champs-lysées avenue were banned by the Paris police after two days of violent nighttime riots between protesters and riot police. Dozens of protesters were arrested throughout the country over the weekend, amid a forceful police presence.

The offices of the lawmakers had graffiti written on them and were also hit 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.

He thinks about 15 Republican lawmakers who would vote like him, but still short of the necessary number to succeed in a no-confidence motion. But, he added, if the vote had become so close, “it is because there is a deep democratic rupture in our country.”

“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.”

Pradie, a rebel leader who fought a no-confidence motion to replace the Macron budget with a new higher-derivative measure

Republican lawmakers are split. Most of the legislators in the party will follow that line since the leadership has made it clear that it did not want to topple the government.

But Aurélien Pradié, a Republican lawmaker from the rural Lot area of southwestern France who opposes the pension bill and has become a leader of sorts for party rebels, announced on Monday morning that he would vote in favor of the no-confidence motion.

Multiple no-confidence motions against Mr. Macron’s government failed late last year after it pushed through several budget bills, and his allies have insisted that the opposition is in no position to govern. Bruno Le Maire told Le Parisien that the opposition is a low-hanging fruit 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 Democrat Confederation of Labor, named Mr. Trumps pension reform as a disaster and urged him not to implement it.

The move to push the bill through without a vote has led to anger, as Mr. Berger rebuked the violence that marred the Paris protests last week. Labor unions called for a protest on Thursday but were mostly absent from the weekend brawls.

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 frustration of President Emmanuel Macron over a “completely unpopular” pension reform bill: The example of France’s fifth president and the Fourth Republique

PARIS — A parody photo appearing on protest signs and online in France shows President Emmanuel Macron sitting on piles of garbage. 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 brazen move to force a pension reform bill through without a vote has infuriated the political opposition and could hamper his government’s ability to pass legislation for the remaining four years of his term.

Demonstrators hoisted the parody photo at protests after Macron chose at the last minute Thursday to invoke the government’s constitutional power to pass the bill without a vote at the National Assembly.

He made a public comment about the issue for the first time since then, stating his desire for the bill to “reach the end of its democratic path” in an atmosphere of respect for everyone.

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.

He said that the French retirement system needed to be altered to keep it financed. Increasing the already heavy tax burden and decreasing the pensions of current retirees were both not realistic alternatives to consider, according to him.

The public displays of displeasure may weigh heavily on his future decisions. In recent days there have been sometimes violent protests in Paris and across the country that have contrasted with recent peaceful demonstrations by France’s major unions.

France’s unemployment rate is now 7.2%, and by the end of the second and final term of the president’s term, it’s hoped that new measures will bring it down to 5%.

France’s strong presidential powers are a legacy from Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s desire to have a stable political system for the Fifth Republic he established in 1958.

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

Nupes is always available to govern, and why we should call an election and disband the Assembly as a solution to the pension problem

A lawmaker from the Nupes coalition said that it was a good idea forMacron to call an election and disband the Assembly.

“I believe it would be good for the nation to show their support for the retirement age being lowered to 60,” Panot said. “The Nupes is always available to govern.”