France\u2019s prime minister, S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, hung on to power last Thursday after a no-confidence motion against his government failed by just eighteen votes. A majority of Parti Socialiste lawmakers, in theory in the opposition, withheld their votes from the motion, ensuring Lecornu\u2019s survival. Why? Because, they say, Lecornu has agreed to retreat on President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s pension reform.<\/p>\n
For Lecornu, it was a welcome stay of execution. His first government collapsed almost immediately on Monday, October 6. On Friday that same week, Macron reappointed Lecornu, giving him forty-eight hours to negotiate a deal to keep his government alive long enough to pass an austerity budget by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n
According to Le Parisien<\/a>, before reappointing his prime minister, Macron called Parti Socialiste leader Olivier Faure to lock down a guarantee that it wouldn\u2019t topple him. Faure confirmed that the phone call took place \u2014 but his party denied any binding deal had been made.<\/p>\n The Parti Socialiste made its decision against censuring Lecornu in response to his opening policy speech to the National Assembly. In it, Lecornu announced a temporary freeze on the retirement-age rise, widely characterized as a \u201csuspension\u201d of the reform. He also ruled out using article 49.3 of the constitution \u2014 a tool extensively used by Macron\u2019s prime ministers to pass legislation, including the pension reform, without a vote by MPs.<\/p>\n The result was that the National Assembly narrowly rejected the radical-left France Insoumise\u2019s censure motion, which was backed by the other left-wing parties as well as the far-right Rassemblement National. Decisively, just seven of the Parti Socialiste\u2019s sixty-nine MPs broke party discipline to vote against the government.<\/p>\n After the vote, Faure justified his party\u2019s decision in an <\/a>interview<\/a> on France TV.\u00a0 \u201cSometimes you have to be responsible,\u201d Faure said. He explained that he made the decision after Lecornu told him about his plan and ruled out using article 49.3.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than three million people . . . many of whom have had difficult, exhausting careers will retire earlier,\u201d Faure added, claiming that under Lecornu\u2019s timeline, pension-age hikes would be stopped until January 2028. That date is after the next presidential election; Faure argued that with the reform paused, the election would allow the French people to definitively settle the issue.<\/p>\n Listen to Faure, and the Parti Socialiste has pulled off a pretty neat trick: thanks to his party\u2019s pragmatism and steadfastness, a hated attack on France\u2019s social model has been put on ice. But not everybody sees things like this. Some unions and academics are deeply skeptical that opponents of the reform should be taking a victory lap.<\/p>\n While France\u2019s largest union, the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Fran\u00e7aise D\u00e9mocratique du Travail (CFDT), celebrated<\/a> the move to freeze hiking the retirement age, others in the labor movement were much less optimistic.<\/p>\n \u201cIn reality, the . . . announcement only delays its application by a few months,\u201d France\u2019s second-largest union, the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration G\u00e9n\u00e9rale du Travail (CGT), said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Following Lecornu\u2019s announcement, economist Micha\u00ebl Zemmour<\/a> wrote on his blog<\/a> that depending on how the government words its measure, the promised suspension would only apply to a narrow age-band of workers, born between 1964 and 1968. For slightly older workers, the damage is already done, and there are no guarantees for slightly younger workers.<\/p>\n After first being rammed through parliament via article 49.3, the pension reform came into effect in September 2023, starting with workers who retired in 1961. The next age hike, scheduled for 2026, will raise the retirement age for workers born in 1964, from sixty-two years and nine months to sixty-three years. Under Lecornu\u2019s proposed timeline, that next step won\u2019t be triggered until 2028. But a pause would do nothing to help workers who\u2019ve already had their retirements pushed back. The preestablished timeline will then continue until 2032, at which point workers born in 1968 are subject to the raised age requirements.<\/p>\n In a literal sense, then, it\u2019s inaccurate to characterize Lecornu\u2019s offer as a \u201csuspension\u201d of the pension reform. If Lecornu\u2019s offer does hold up, it would effectively mean that workers born in 1964 will be able to retire in fall 2026 instead of January 2027, per the current schedule. In no sense is the pension-age hike not still happening.<\/p>\n But will Lecornu\u2019s promise even come close to fruition?<\/p>\n When Macron\u2019s then\u2013prime minister, \u00c9lisabeth Borne, passed the euphemistically named \u201creform\u201d in 2023, her government avoided a democratic vote in the National Assembly. That was despite fierce opposition in the streets<\/a> and from a majority<\/a> of the population.<\/p>\n But Lecornu\u2019s sleight-of-hand suspension won\u2019t be pulled out of the same hat. Instead, the measure will be presented as an amendment to the social-security financing bill, up for examination this November.<\/p>\n That means that for the Parti Socialiste to accept Lecornu\u2019s false offer of \u201csuspending\u201d the retirement reform, it will have to vote for this government\u2019s next budget \u2014 all of it.<\/p>\n That budget is another Macron austerity package. Built on a goal of reducing the budget deficit to below 5 percent without raising taxes on the rich, it means at least \u20ac40 billion worth of cuts as well as a raft of nickel-and-diming workers and students.<\/p>\n Petty measures include abandoning a \u20ac500 grant for apprentices to finance driving lessons as well as getting rid of a tax exemption on their salaries. The budget also taxes employee benefits like meal checks and cultural and vacation credits at 8 percent \u2014 measures unlikely to offset the huge sums being splashed on weapons spending. In 2026, the military is getting an additional \u20ac3.5 billion<\/a> over previous forecasts: a total of \u20ac6.7 billion more than was in last year\u2019s funding bill.<\/p>\n On health care spending, Lecornu\u2019s budget also follows through on a plan from previous prime minister Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou\u2019s government to crack down on sick days<\/a>, for which the state covers the cost. In 2024, the government spent \u20ac17 billion on sick days, prompting Bayrou\u2019s minister of social affairs, Catherine Vautrin (now Lecornu\u2019s Armed Forces minister), to comment that this is encouraging a lack of \u201cpersonal responsibility\u201d from people who think they\u2019re entitled to \u201cfree access\u201d to coverage.<\/p>\n Budget battles<\/a> have brought down government<\/a> after government<\/a> since Macron\u2019s reelection in 2022. Since then, Macron has never had a proper majority in the National Assembly and has burned through platoons of ministers to force through austerity budgets aimed at dismantling France\u2019s social system<\/a>. No-confidence motions, mostly originating from France Insoumise, have dogged every cut and \u201creform.\u201d But they didn\u2019t really start causing Macron serious problems until summer 2024\u2019s snap parliamentary<\/a> elections<\/a>, which reduced his governing coalition\u2019s numbers even further.<\/p>\n Macron\u2019s first new premier after those elections, Michel Barnier, fell last December<\/a> during budget negotiations. In a no-confidence vote three months into his administration, the votes of all the left-wing parties (including the Parti Socialiste) plus Marine Le Pen\u2019s Rassemblement National and its allies put an end to his brief reign.<\/p>\n Always ready to help out Macron, the Socialists tried extending a hand to work with Barnier\u2019s successor, Bayrou, despite his plans to cut \u20ac44 billion in spending. But according to press reports, Bayrou holed himself up in his office over the summer and never reached out to negotiate with them. He then auto-defenestrated by calling a confidence vote he knew he would lose, given the obvious lack of parliamentary support for his particularly full-throated brand of austerity (Bayrou, who owns a personal home called the White House, nurses presidential ambitions for 2027).<\/p>\n But while the Parti Socialiste now has a more willing partner in Lecornu, it\u2019s unrealistic to see even his meager proposition passing France\u2019s parliament in its current form.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because even if the change does make it out of the National Assembly, it will quickly founder in the Senate, which is controlled by the conservative Les R\u00e9publicains.<\/p>\n Macron\u2019s camp has often relied on this party\u2019s support, especially as he\u2019s tacked ever more to the right \u2014 Lecornu\u2019s government has six ministers from the party, and he started his career in it too.\u00a0 But Les R\u00e9publicains will not support every maneuver, especially this limited \u201csuspension\u201d of a reform they consider critical for France\u2019s economy. A key motivation for Lecornu\u2019s first resignation was Interior Minister Bruno R\u00e9tailleau\u2019s threat to quit his government. Retailleau, an austere, reactionary political veteran who also has presidential ambitions for 2027, was elected Les R\u00e9publicains\u2019 party president earlier this year, promising a further rightward turn.<\/p>\n \u201c[For the prime minister] to last a few more months, to scrape up a few more votes, the future is being sacrificed,\u201d Retailleau wrote in a statement<\/a> last week Wednesday, slamming Lecornu\u2019s proposal to freeze the retirement reform. \u201cIt means more debt, but also less growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Retailleau also accused Lecornu of giving the Parti Socialiste the initiative in the National Assembly. \u201cBy retreating on retirement, the signal has been given [that] any and all courageous reforms can be called into question,\u201d Retailleau said, vowing to fight \u201ctooth and nail\u201d against the shift in both houses of parliament.<\/p>\n Indeed, the political realities in the two chambers expose the bankruptcy of the Parti Socialiste\u2019s attempts to glean concessions from Lecornu.<\/p>\n During last year\u2019s battle over the government\u2019s budget, France Insoumise and the left-wing parties succeeded in passing a raft of amendments to the funding bill, due to mass absenteeism by members of the governmental bloc and other right-wingers. Those MPs didn\u2019t see the point of resisting left-wing amendments because they knew they could depend on the Senate overturning any social spending that made its way through the National Assembly.<\/p>\n When there are differences between a budget passed by the National Assembly and one passed by the Senate, a joint committee composed of an equal number of members from both houses is thrown together to decide on a final text. Under the current composition of France\u2019s parliament, a mixed committee will always have a majority for the neoliberal right.<\/p>\n Before being brought into government, Retailleau was president of Les R\u00e9publicains\u2019 Senate group, which has a majority in the upper house. If Retailleau has announced his opposition to a freeze on the pension reform, there\u2019s a simple conclusion: the amendment won\u2019t pass.<\/p>\n Far from the \u201csuspension of the pension reform\u201d being a real retreat or anything to savor, as some observers have painted it, Macron and Lecornu know about these realities. So does the Parti Socialiste. Why the act, then?<\/p>\n I wrote after the 2022 Parti Socialiste conference that the party needed to change or die<\/a>. At the time, Faure was criticized from the right wing of the party for pursuing alliances with France Insoumise and Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon. Since then, the conservative flank of the party is firmly in the driver\u2019s seat. Faure routinely slams M\u00e9lenchon and France Insoumise with reactionary clich\u00e9s. This latest gyration is just one more part of a long story where the Socialists try to maintain credibility with the Left while also presenting themselves<\/a> as a responsible party of government.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want Macron to succeed. We want to participate in this [governing] majority,\u201d Faure said in 2017 after Macron won his first presidential election. Pretty soon they\u2019ll have an opportunity to do just that. But is it worth it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u2019s prime minister, S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, hung on to power last Thursday after a no-confidence motion against his government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-228230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}