Emmanuel Macron Has No Mandate for His Attack on Pensions
After months of strikes, Emmanuel Macron’s government has imposed its pension cuts using constitutional article 49-3 — decreeing the law without a vote in parliament. With no mandate for its unpopular reforms, Macron’s administration is bypassing the democratic process itself.
French president Emmanuel Macron at the Italy-France Summit on February 27, 2020 in Naples, Italy. (Paolo Manzo / Getty Images)
On Saturday, France’s prime minister Édouard Philippe announced he would be pushing through the controversial pension reform using constitutional article 49-3 — meaning that it will simply be decreed, without a vote in the National Assembly. Like his predecessor François Hollande, the neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron has thus resorted to pushing through his attacks on the French social model by undemocratic means — simply disregarding the displays of mass opposition. In this article for Mediapart, Ellen Salvi argues that this move shows the government’s weakness — and promises lasting damage to Macron’s legitimacy.
Running His Presidency to the Ground
Emmanuel Macron has just pointed the weapon of 49-3 against his own head. In deploying a mechanism that allows a bill to be passed without being subject to a vote, the government broke off a parliamentary debate that wasn’t going as quickly as it liked. Its intention is to put an end to the catastrophe brought by the pension reform — and get people finally talking about something else. But the decision has not opened up a way forward for the government. Rather, it can expect to spend the next two years watching on impotently as Emmanuel Macron’s presidency runs into the ground.
The formal decision to use 49-3 was taken at a special cabinet meeting on February 29. The meeting was initially meant to be solely devoted to handling coronavirus. But the government exploited the situation to slip 49-3 onto the agenda, after weeks of threatening to use it. The cabinet considered the time was right — and the mood now ripe — to deploy a mechanism that even ministers have no problem terming “the nuclear option.”
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