SIf the pension reform is not censored by the Constitutional Council, Friday April 14, Emmanuel Macron will finally be able to breathe, after three months of a trying sequence. For him, it would be a victory, but at what cost? Within the majority, this is not the time for celebration. Embarrassed, sometimes frozen, a certain number of Renaissance deputies rehashed. In private, they point out the errors that have marred the course of this law, since its announcement – aimed at weakening Valérie Pécresse, candidate of the party Les Républicains (LR) – during the presidential campaign of 2022, until the use of article 49.3 of the Constitution.
At each stage, they assure, there was an option to avoid the black scenario, that of a reform crystallizing the anger of the trade unions and three quarters of the French, which could not be voted by the parliamentarians , forced to discuss it in a limited time. But Emmanuel Macron did not deviate, almost alone against all.
Of course, the painful reforms (“courageous”, some will say) never pass without frontal opposition, especially in the street. And when the incriminated texts are ultimately adopted, they are rarely questioned afterwards. In wanting to raise the starting age from 60 to 62, Nicolas Sarkozy had also faced a very harsh social conflict; he had held on. But 2010 has nothing to do with 2023. The conditions of the election of the candidate of the UMP (Union for a popular movement, become LR), three years earlier, gave him real momentum: he had won clearly on Ségolène Royal, the French having had a real choice.
“You have to know how to give up”
Then, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, his government had infused the idea – including among the project’s critics – that a reform was vital, given the country’s financial situation. Finally, Mr. Sarkozy had resisted pressure from those on the right who encouraged him to go further (65 years old), preferring a less ambitious reform (62 years old) but likely to be more easily accepted. “He had wondered about consent and its limits, explains his former adviser, Henri Guaino. When it does not pass, you have to know how to give up. It’s not shameful. But, on the contrary, the best way to renew his authority. »
Should the art of governing integrate this constraint (consent), beyond the anointing of universal suffrage? ” Obviously “replies the philosopher Myriam Revault d’Allonnes, according to which “Any democratic society requires a consent which is not of the order of passivity but of an exercise of renewed citizenship, even outside of elections”. For having failed to convince, most of the presidents of the Ve Republic had to back down at some point to avoid fracturing society. In 1984, François Mitterrand, although he had a majority in the Assembly, withdrew the highly contested Savary school bill. “I worry about what those who don’t think like me think, he then explained. And I take it into account. I have to take reality into account. »
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