13.04.2023

After the 49.3 nuclear option

Increasing the retirement age to 64 has triggered huge protests. But, asks Paul Russell, with Macron in his final term, with cracks opening up in his party and with no natural successor, could Marine Le Pen finally make it into the Élysée?

Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919-33) allowed the president to take emergency measures without the Reichstag’s prior consent. Visiting Berlin, Michel Debré - a young French law professor and future prime minister - wondered why France’s Third Republic did not enact a similar law. But it was not until 1959 and general Charles de Gaulle’s election as president that his new Fifth Republic would be thus empowered.

De Gaulle, despising political parties and parliamentary prerogatives, proposed a new constitution to give the executive greatly enhanced powers. He submitted his proposals to a plebiscite - a favoured tactic when de Gaulle needed to bypass the national assembly - and the French duly voted in his constitution, along with its notorious article 49.3.

Emmanuel Macron’s invocation of 49.3, in order to foreclose any attempt at a parliamentary vote on pension reform, seals a long decline since the heady year of 2017, when a brash new young president swept into the Élysée, while his brash new party, En Marche, gained a commanding majority in the national assembly. En Marche deputies took an oath of allegiance to Macron, the person and the president, which requires them to cast their votes as he instructs.

The Parti Socialiste (PS) had disintegrated after François Hollande’s lacklustre single-term presidency, while the traditional right, Les Républicains (LR), failed to register; and by the time of the presidential election in 2022, the LR leader, François Fillon, had become mired in scandal following an accidental exposé in a Daily Telegraph profile of Fillon’s Welsh spouse (‘Penelopegate’). On the far right Marine Le Pen’s National Front remained a threat - subsequently renamed Rassemblement National (RN). There was also Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) on the left. But in 2017, as in 2022, Le Pen was the run-off presidential candidate ... and she lost badly.

From the start, Macron presented himself as the technocratic solution to a left-right quagmire - a solution eagerly adopted by France’s middle class. But to what purpose? The French political process has a dynamic which requires contestation in order to reach the stasis of compromise (or not, as the case may be). Macron is a lightweight simulacrum of de Gaulle, without the historical depth and prestige which clung to the general long after his sell-by date. It became evident that there was a vacuity and indifference in Macron’s dealings with the body politic.

When Macron was re-elected for a second (and final) term in 2022, once again he became the default candidate, insofar as the electorate voted to keep Le Pen out of the Élysée. The shock came with the general election, which always follows on from the presidential one. The single most important result was that Macron’s coalition, Ensemble, lost its absolute majority. A red-green coalition, the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) forged by Mélenchon from his own party, the LFI, along with the PS, the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and the greens (EELV), surged to 132 deputies, making them the second largest group in the assembly. The RN jumped from single figures to 89 deputies, while the far left, those such as Lutte Ouvrière, which refused to join NUPES, gained no representation whatsoever.

Disaffection

Meanwhile, the appearance of the Yellow Vests in 2018 signalled a largely ignored layer of disaffected citizens - often marginal to political parties and rooted in provincial towns and cities. Being largely libertarian or anarchistic and lacking a coherent leadership, the Yellow Vests expressed the malaise of those who felt disenfranchised from the political process.

In response, Macron promoted another populist measure, his Citizen Convention on Climate Change, in 2019. This followed the so-called Grand National Debate, whereby in a series of sessions a cross-region selection of citizens came up with 149 recommendations. Macron and parliament resisted most of them, and finally agreed to about 40% of the demands, though leaving their implementation in law somewhat unclear. Once again, the president was squandering the goodwill he had hoped to garner.

For some time, a project to ‘reform’ the age of retirement had been airing in political circles and media debate. In poll after poll, around 70% of the population objected to raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Trade unions were not alone in pointing out that young people from less privileged or less highly educated backgrounds began work earlier and would therefore spend more years in labour than the nominal age of retirement, whatever that may be. Others claimed that keeping the workforce on for an extra two years would reduce jobs for the next generations of workers, especially if and when unemployment became a significant issue. The argument that France lagged behind on the age of retirement, compared to other developed countries, was met with the challenge: ‘Why should France be dragged into another neoliberal race to exploit its workforce for the sake of capital?’

Despite the strikes, demonstrations and riots spreading across the country, Macron was determined to see the measure adopted. He reached out to parties he thought amenable, such as LR and others on the right and centre-right. LR extracted concessions, but even so could not guarantee that its bloc of 61 deputies would rally behind the president.

Marine Le Pen’s party would not agree to back the measure and demanded changes. As for the NUPES, it tabled … 13,000 (!) amendments. During a particularly stormy assembly meeting, NUPES delegates stood up, brandished placards and intoned The Marseillaise, when prime minister Elizabeth Borne was attempting to speak.

Emmanuel Macron felt it incumbent to obtain a parliamentary majority in order to both demonstrate his hold on power and convince the electorate that the majority of their elected representatives favoured the reform. But, when deputies from his own party, now renamed Renaissance, expressed doubts about holding the line, Macron realised he might have to use the nuclear option - 49.3. France has a two-term presidential system and, while Macron will step down, his deputies will be rudderless without their leader - and at the mercy of a vengeful electorate.

A leak revealed that, just before Macron invoked 49.3, he addressed his cabinet: “My political interest would have been better served by going for a favourable vote. But in the current situation, I consider the financial and economic risks too great.” 49.3 was duly enacted, which led to even more heated assembly scenes, as well as a number of no-confidence votes. Macron’s government survived by nine votes! It is not the first time that Macron has invoked 49.3, but previously it had not been used for such a contentious and unpopular measure.

Junior PCF

In a recently published book, Happy days are ahead of us (but belying its title), Fabien Roussel, the PCF leader, bemoaned the lack of winnable seats allocated to his party by the LFI. Roussel looked back fondly to his predecessor, Georges Marchais, who had successfully negotiated PCF electoral representation in a pact with the PS’s François Mitterrand.

The PCF is very much the junior party in the NUPES, with just 12 deputies (EELV has 23, PS 24 and LFI 72). But it is not alone in its dissatisfaction with Mélenchon’s authority and control. During the autumn and winter months, its partner parties held their congresses, with debates focusing on their relationship to NUPES.

The EELV took the decisive step to stand alone in the European elections: “We want a more federal Europe,” announced the newly elected Marine Tondelier, aiming her remarks at those for whom “these questions seem secondary” - especially the LFI.

At the PCF’s annual congress, Fabien Roussel won more than 80% of the votes with a line opposed to the current structure of the NUPES and critical of the LFI. Though a party executive admitted that “the fear of the LFI’s hegemony is completely legitimate”, he admitted that unity remains essential, given the current state of the left and of the PCF.

The PS’s congress was equally stormy, centring around the divisive issue of the NUPES and the alliance with Mélenchon’s party. Olivier Faure was re-elected to lead the party, but had to make room for his competitors, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy. Mayer-Rossignol, who became the PS’s first deputy secretary, wants the party to be “allied, but not aligned” with the LFI and NUPES.

If on a host of important political and social issues, the NUPES parties are in agreement, there is no unity on France’s relationship with the European Union, on secularism, nuclear energy and international alliances - particularly Nato. Yet in both the EELV and PS, the delegates most opposed to NUPES did not get much support and gained fewer votes than in previous congresses.

In the current political climate, NUPES is still the dominant left force and its capacity to enrage the right remains impressive. The ‘legacy’ parties, the PS and PCF, are aware of their limitations, but are equally aware of their ‘strength in unity’, even if their own political programmes and agendas have to be somewhat curtailed - for the moment.

Another consideration (not discussed openly) is the problem of Le Pen’s RN. Necessarily, as the two largest opposition parties, NUPES and RN, find themselves voting in tandem - much to the discomfort of NUPES’ constituent elements. And although NUPES, with 131 deputies, is larger, it is a coalition, whereas RN is a single party. At each election Le Pen advances, and in between she softens RN’s line to make it more acceptable (not just to the electorate but the EU and above all the US). No longer opposed to the euro or the EU and no longer talking of ‘Frexit’, Le Pen is resembling Italy’s Giorgia Meloni in her increasing adherence to Realpolitik.

The next elections, both presidential and national, could be a game changer.