Jérôme Fourquet (Ifop): “The temperature in the social pressure cooker has not yet risen”

by time news

Posted Dec 18 2022 at 7:00 PM

An “enchanted parenthesis”. Guest of the Grand rendez-vous, the political program of Europe 1 in partnership with CNews and “Les Echos”, the political scientist Jérôme Fourquet thus summarized the impact that a victory of the Blues could have had on the morale of the French, some hours before the FIFA World Cup final kicks off. But even if it had been confirmed, this “dose of dopamine” would have had an effect “very limited in time”.

For the director of the opinion and business strategies department of Ifop, “we should not expect a reversal in the state of mind of our fellow citizens”. He notes an “acceleration” in the progression of the feeling of downgrading for a year, recalling that only 37% of French people today say they can put a little money aside each month compared to 54% in 2010 and if the rise in prices, especially food, is almost painless for 30% of people, 30% switch them every month in the red.

Escalation of violence

Added to this context is the fact that “the French have in mind what awaits them at the start of the school year: a rise in various and varied bills, pension reform, uncertainty about the supply of electricity”. The political scientist also recalls the rise in violence, with recently several episodes of organization of private self-defense groups, in Nantes, Rouannes and near Nice where a man was lynched.

In this context, if, given our age pyramid, there is “undoubtedly a long-term need to reform pensions”, “are we within six months”, wonders Jérôme Fourquet, stressing that the Touraine reform did not finish its rise in charge.

A political emergency

For him, the urgency to make this pension reform is political. “Now that the announcement has been made, [Emmanuel Macron] has to go all the way” – “he’s already tried” and “can’t afford to fail twice”. And he must “give a sign […] that structural reforms are under way” in Brussels and Berlin and in the markets. But beware of the consequences.

“The temperature in the social pressure cooker has not yet risen more than that”, recognizes the director of the department at the IFOP. He explains it for several reasons. First, referring to the note he wrote with Jérémie Peltier, from the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, he underlines that “we have a society that is tired, it has suffered successive shocks, the wave of terrorism, the ‘yellow vests’, the first pension reform project, the Covid and now the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin who raised the specter of nuclear winter, of global confrontation”. And “30 to 40% of the population did not emerge unscathed from these successive shocks”.

“64 or 65 is not the same thing”

The second reason why calm prevails today is “government policy, with the public authorities taking out the check book, which nevertheless sent a series of signals to the population”, “even if for many French people the account is not there”.

But the current relative calm does not mean that the situation will not become tense. On pensions, “we have not yet gotten to the heart of the matter”, warns Jérôme Fourquet, while the unions, all united, have chosen to wait for the announcement of the content of the government’s project before setting a first mobilization date. He also underlines that “everything will also depend on the way things are presented depending on whether we are talking about going back to 64 or 65 years old, in terms of acceptance in public opinion, it is not at all the same thing “.

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