U.S. President Joe Biden and Congress are about to enter tough negotiations on extending Medicare funding and raising the debt ceiling. In the American way, Republicans and Democrats will be privately lobbied by a plethora of organizations hoping to gain some advantage out of the process.
In France these things are done differently. On some visceral issue, the government proposes and the parliament eventually votes, but for weeks and months in between, huge street demonstrations rock Paris and provincial cities.
Trade unions, political parties and their allies draw literally hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, trying to affect a plan or block it outright.
French President Emmanuel Macron is currently facing not just parliamentary opposition to his pension reform plans. He’s facing the entire country. To be exact, two-thirds of the French people oppose his plans, according to polls.
Massive street demonstrations are a hallowed heritage from earlier ages in French political history. They have characterized French political life since the end of the 19th century, when they grew from early working class and socialist political party organizing. After World War I, right-wing fascists went into the streets as well.
Other European countries had similar histories, but over time, policymaking from the streets has lessened as parliamentary regimes have stabilized.
Not in France, however.
Today in the fight against Macron’s pension reform, labor union leaders are promising to bring the economy to its knees — to shut the country down. And they are doing it — just as they stopped the bill earlier in Macron’s presidency, and just as the national upsurge of “yellow jacket” populist rebellion did to protest the continuing decline of standards of living among the less-well off in society.
Why does Macron so stubbornly forge ahead? His concessions — for example, working not to 65 but to 64 years old for a full pension, special conditions for those who start working at a very young age, or for those who have particularly grueling jobs — have not worked. And Macron faces a public-opinion reality in which many people for years have said they don’t just dislike the president — they hate him.
A few days ago, in a letter to the unions, Macron wrote that he’s asking the French “to work a little longer" (to 64 years of age instead of 62) instead of several alternatives, which include reducing pensions, raising taxes, or “obliging our children and grandchildren to carry the financial burden” through budget deficits and debt increases. In other words, carrying out the policies that other governments, including the U.S., have used for many years.
Isn't Macron politically crazy? Why should he take responsibility for a rotten job when other presidents have given up and gone off more quietly into the history books? Why not kick the can down the road, as others have done?
In fact, why not give more instead of asking more? At the beginning of his presidency in 1981, Franꞔois Mitterrand sponsored a fifth week of paid vacation and a huge increase in the minimum wage.
It’s a matter of political determination for Macron, even of honor, in the de Gaulle tradition. The struggle over reforming France’s pension system has become the emblem of his presidency. He’ll negotiate, but he will not abandon the fight.
The opposition to Macron’s bill is not without good arguments.
The Guardian cites a fall 2022 report by the state’s own pension advisory council, which concludes that a projected annual deficit of $12 billion to $14 billion in the later 2020s would be manageable. Moreover, in the mid-2030s the budget could be balanced as France’s baby-boomer generation finishes retirement.
The unions are also proposing what the Biden budget asks for to ensure Medicare: Increase corporate and high-income tax rates.
All this is fair, yet in the case of France there’s something else, something deeper than the numbers, that must be taken into account, and that is the French social model, the standard of a country where people work to live rather than live to work.
Macron’s passion for regularizing retirement rules and balancing budgets is seen as yet another instance of removing one of the jewels in French life, that collection of welfare state benefits that — along with all the natural beauty of the country, the unique cuisine and a pride in France’s historical culture — makes France what it is.
Of course, that last sentence is a bit misleading. A lot of French people are living hard times. Parts of the French social model have already been lost or reduced. Many and probably most of today’s protesters see themselves as fighting a rearguard, not a vanguard action.
These realities clash with Macron’s desire for a legacy. Macron wants, rather desperately, to do the right thing. He doesn't want his time in office to end with a stand down. But he faces hostile public opinion and strong socio-political organizations.
What we see is a classic situation of the French type: The president and his parliamentary support (in this case, a minority government) against the street as well as the opposition in parliament.
The Senate has just approved the bill. Now, a special legislative procedure in the constitution could get the bill adopted in parliament, so long as the opposition — monopolized by Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s left-wing NUPES group — don’t unite to vote a motion of no confidence. They probably won’t, because this would mean new elections.
Thus, the fight over France’s retirement rules heads to a conclusion. Another moment in the struggle to preserve the “French quality of life,” the principle of work to live rather than live to work.
