IIt was to be expected, the decision of the Constitutional Council, made public on Friday April 14, did not lower the social temperature by one degree, while France has been plunged since January into the interminable pension dispute. The departure at 64 barely validated, the President of the Republic decided to promulgate the law without delay, and without listening to the calls not to rush anything. This speed will not calm the anger of the inter-union, which immediately declined Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to meet him on Tuesday, April 18. The unions, on the other hand, promised to make the day of the 1is– May the high point of a popular mobilization that the left parties also intend to support.
Draw ? Not quite. The argument of legality now available to the executive is not minor in the face of accusations from the opposition, which accused it of having abused the weapons of rationalized parliamentarism to restrict debate and have its unpopular reform adopted against all odds. . Only six social provisions, including the senior index, have been censored, because they “had no place” in this law of a financial nature. A new text will be necessary to make them permanent. At the same time, the proposal to organize a referendum of shared initiative (RIP) put forward by the leftist oppositions to counter the reform was rejected. It will be followed by another. Apart from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who criticized the Constitutional Council for“to be more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy than to those of the sovereign people”, no one questioned his decision, which is fortunate for the functioning of our institutions.
Morale undermined
Emmanuel Macron, on the other hand, is far from having finished with the social and political crisis, which he continues to fuel dangerously. If the country is not blocked, if the rate of strikers is lower than in other conflicts, the holding over time of powerful demonstrations in Paris, in regional cities and medium-sized towns testifies to the level of incomprehension and of anger aroused by retirement at 64, particularly among the electorate of the middle and working classes. The President of the Republic cannot fail to see that the reform he wants to impose provides powerful fuel to Marine Le Pen, who, in all the polls, appears to be the only one to benefit politically from the conflict. Nor can he ignore the intensity of the democratic dispute to which his determination to impose it gave rise in a context of relative majority and the fragility of representative democracy. While a large majority of French people still remain hostile to his project, he must finally listen instead of reviving fire as he did again on Friday by declaring: “Don’t give up, that’s my motto. »
Laurent Berger, the national secretary of the CFDT, demanded a “decency period” before any resumption of contact. Elisabeth Borne mentioned a necessary “recovery period” after four months of heartbreak too often enamelled with violence. If reducing the pressure is the first emergency, there is a second that will be much more difficult to achieve: to make the country want to move forward, while the accumulation of crises and transitions requires the mobilization of all. By this yardstick, the cost of pension reform appears exorbitant. It contributes to further undermine the morale of a country that no longer manages to value its successes.