Macron: "If I have to accept the unpopularity of the pension reform, I will accept it"

Emmanuel Macron has appealed this Wednesday to the "general interest" to defend the unpopular pension reform, which has turned the majority of the French against him, has led to two motions of censure and has placed France on the brink of crisis political and social.

The president declared himself willing to assume unpopularity before his fellow citizens for a law that increases the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.

The interview has served more to justify the reform than to announce new measures or changes.

It will hardly calm the spirits.

"This reform is not a luxury, it is not a pleasure, it is a necessity for the country," said the French president in an interview with the one o'clock news on the TF1 and France 2 channels. "I would have preferred not to do it , but it is my responsibility, it is the general interest”, highlighted the president.

Macron, who ends his second and last term in 2027, added: "Between short-term polls and the general interest of the country, I choose the general interest of the country, and if unpopularity has to be assumed today, I will."

Macron confirmed that, after the review of the reform by the Constitutional Court, his intention is for it to enter into force "before the end of the year."

He therefore ruled out withdrawing the law, and for now excludes relieving his prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, who on Monday barely survived a motion of no confidence.

Let alone call early elections or a referendum on the law, as some in the opposition are calling for.

But the president admitted that, during the protests, "a feeling of injustice" has been expressed in France that the government must address.

He promised measures so that big companies with extraordinary profits distribute a part among wage earners, and to improve working conditions and wages.

Regarding the tensions in the street in recent days and episodes of threats to elected officials and deputies, after two months of peaceful demonstrations, he declared: "We will not tolerate any overflow."

He specified, however, that "we must listen to legitimate anger that is not violence."

On Tuesday night, during a meeting at the Élysée Palace with Macronista parliamentarians, he declared: "The crowd has no legitimacy in front of the people who express themselves before their elected officials."

It was an allusion to a famous quote by Victor Hugo: "Often the crowd betrays the people."

The phrase ruffled the spirits.

In the interview, the president distinguished between the peaceful demonstrations of the unions and the violent ones.

And he referred to the Trumpist assault on the Washington Capitol in January 2021 or the irruption of a crowd in Congress in Brasilia last January.

“When the United States has lived through everything it has experienced in the Capitol, when Brazil has lived what it has lived (...), it must be said clearly: we respect, we listen, we try to advance through the country, but we cannot accept even the factious nor the factions”.

Macron has taken the floor after staying in the background for weeks and avoiding intervening in the debate on the pension reform.

The intervention, in an original format such as a simultaneous interview on the midday news, comes after a week of high political and social tension in France.

Last Thursday, the president, when verifying that he lacked a majority in the National Assembly to adopt the reform, activated article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows imposing a law by evading the vote.

Accusing the Government of acting in an undemocratic manner, the opposition presented two motions of censure, the only way to stop the reform and, at the same time, bring down Prime Minister Borne.

One of the motions received 278 votes, nine short of a majority.

The reform was approved, but the result did not quench the anger in the street.

Paris and several French cities have already had six nights of spontaneous protests and riots.

The unions have called for a large national demonstration for Thursday, the ninth since the protests began in January.

In the interview, Macron defended the democratic neatness of the reform.

But the use of article 49.3 and the only nine votes that the opposition lacked to bring down the government cast doubt on Borne's ability to govern.

The president's idea is to seek specific alliances "with people from the left and from the right", although the most obvious support may come from the moderate right.

"I regret not having been able to convince," he admitted when taking stock of the last few months.

But he added: "There is a tendency in our democracies to want to abstract from the reality principle."

He did not convince anyone, neither the unions nor the opposition.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party and Macron's rival in the last two presidential elections, reacted: "We have listened to the mechanical and dilatory words of a man who seems to be increasingly lonely and seems to have lost all sense of reality. , all contact with the outside world, perhaps even with their own”.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leading party of the left, the anti-capitalist and eurosceptic La France Insoumisa, stated: “The more time passes, the more we have the feeling that this man lives outside of all reality to tell us that we are what we are We abstract from the reality principle.

The truth is that he has not understood anything ”.

It was a matter, for Macron, of retaking the pulse of the country, after the divorce that has caused the pension reform.

To persuade and appease.

The task will be difficult.

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