Lhe roadmap issued Friday, May 27 by Elisabeth Borne to members of the government is indexed on the very strong political distrust that paralyzes the country. “Speed, efficiency, results”, ordered the Prime Minister to try to rehabilitate public action while many French people doubt that the State can still do something for them. At the same time, the President of the Republic is looking for a method to involve the French in the reforms.
The combination of this double imperative, to act quickly while taking the time to consult and involve as many players as possible, sums up the difficulty of the five-year period which is about to begin. Major projects must be carried out quickly, such as the ecological transition, the new educational contract, the fight against medical deserts, because the signals have become alarming: the planet is visibly warming up; the hospital creaks; national education is going through an unprecedented vocational crisis.
Everything is to be rebuilt; yet no one really knows by what end all these projects will be taken. The only reform that was clearly spelled out during the presidential campaign – raising the retirement age to 65 – has aroused such opposition in public opinion and such revolt among trade unions that one wonders how it will see the day.
Democratic divorce
For a long time, the word reform rhymed, in France, with showdown. Some right-wing governments have even gauged the depth of their action by the number of strike days it triggered, seeing it as a way to galvanize their voters and a way to solidify their electoral base. The movement of “yellow vests”, which marked the previous five-year term, set the record straight. It revealed the collapse of the left-right divide, the marginalization of trade unions, the invisibility of a part of society and its temptation to resort to violence to obtain reparation because it felt itself violated.
Combined with the rise in abstention, this irruption has brought to light the scale of the democratic divorce which undermines the country and makes the very idea of reform eminently difficult: to move is to take the risk of rupture; to stay on the sidelines is also to increase the risk of rupture. The only way out is to reweave the link between the base and the top, involve the French in change, share responsibilities.
In the new role he assigns himself, Emmanuel Macron has a lot to be forgiven for. He embodied verticality throughout his first term, both out of a natural inclination and because he wanted to mark a clear break with the emollient five-year term of François Hollande. His opponents, coming from the left and the right of government, hold him responsible for the rise of the extremes and their own weakening, which is a great credit to him. At PS as at LR, the worm had been in the fruit for many years. The unions, CFDT included, accuse him of having wanted to marginalize them, which is a way of denying their own limits linked to the narrowness of their base. The accumulation of litigation is such that the Head of State will not find many allies in the political and trade union forces present, at a time when the political debate tends to become polarized and radicalized.
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