2023-04-18 11:00:08
Placed under the sign of “hundred days”, Emmanuel Macron’s televised address on Monday April 17, three days after the disputed promulgation of the pension law, had something unreal about it. The hundred days generally correspond to the dynamic and joyful phase of the beginning of a presidential mandate.
This is certainly not the case here, since the Head of State will begin the second year of his second term in a week, weighed down by an unpopularity that risks cutting his legs permanently. The Hundred Days also refers to a historical episode that did not end well for its instigator, Napoleon. The subliminal message sent by the President of the Republic to the French is therefore particularly complex: everything starts today, but everything can end badly.
The reality is more prosaic. Already started by the loss, in June 2022, of the absolute majority in the National Assembly, Emmanuel Macron’s room for maneuver is close to zero. A quarter is the horizon he sets himself to try to recover a little air while the pension reform, adopted with forceps, has aroused incomprehension and anger in the depths of the country: the French are angry with him, the unions , projected on the 1is May, refuse to speak to him, the left promises to continue the fight and the right does not intend to give him any gifts.
To try to unstick, no major political maneuver but a slight inflection from this ” anger “ that the Head of State says entendre », but of which he tries to move the object in the hope of opening up perspectives. According to him, this anger would certainly concern pensions a little, a subject on which he does not want to concede anything because “Reform is needed” but it would also refer “at rising prices”, to professional wear and tear, to the dilapidation of certain public services, to security… so many irritants of daily life around which he now calls on all goodwill to mobilize. “We have before us a hundred days of peace, unity, ambition and action in the service of France”, he claimed, giving an appointment on July 14 for a « premiere bill ».
strenuous exercise
The period sounds like a new reprieve granted to Elisabeth Borne, who also came out very weakened by the conflict after the defection of the LR group and the impossibility of any agreement with the CFDT. In order to be able to roll out the roadmap for the next three months, the Prime Minister will have to deploy treasures of patience and diplomacy to try to reconnect with the social partners and negotiate majorities in Parliament text by text, sometimes with the right, sometimes with the left.
Even before the pension reform tensed the positions, the exercise proved to be terribly laborious. It is therefore by no means guaranteed that the three headings set out by the Head of State: “a new work life pact” negotiated with the social partners; justice and “Republican Order”with announcements against “social security and tax fraud”, or “progress to live better”, involving rapid measures in the fields of education and health, are undergoing major developments. It will then be necessary to review the political system in depth.
For the time being, the movement that Emmanuel Macron intends to stimulate is coming up against the foreseeable resistance of the opposition parties and the active forces who refuse to play his game by going through the pension conflict. Returned to his verticality and his isolation, greeted by concerts of pans, the head of state remains more than ever prisoner of a badly started second term.
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