France is not at a standstill, but politics is as if blocked by a repetitive and already tiresome back and forth between the Assembly, which the Nupes wants to transform into a teenage squat, and the street, which the unions take over every week to show that they are not dead.
The government and the opponents play their part, but Emmanuel Macron and Élisabeth Borne keep enough cards in their games for the pension reform to be adopted, with or without 49.3.
Reform ultimately modest in the savings it entails, incidental in the emergencies of the moment, but rich in real symbolic force: the shift to 64 in the retirement age goes against the climate of spending and relaxation that the government itself has talked about other issues.
This reform is a prerequisite, not an outcome
As a swallow does not make spring, a reform does not lead to recovery, but it points, finally, the right direction: work rather than taxes, debt, impoverishment...
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