Sanctioned by the National Assembly after posing proudly, with a balloon bearing the image of Olivier Dussopt’s head at his feet, LFI deputy Thomas Portes was nevertheless able to count on his supporters to put his gesture into perspective. Thus, Mélenchon quipped: “Macron is going to ban all the chamboule-tout in the celebrations of the country.” His friend Aurélien Saintoul theorized it: social movements are taking up “the carnival tradition”. Either. I predicted from October in these columns a beginning of the year mixing “parliamentary theater” and “street art”… here we are served. It is true that from the start, this debate on pensions has offered a very curious political ball where everyone seems to be wearing the clothes of others.
Only the Insoumis deputies, unsurprisingly, kept their disguises as violent and hateful agitators lowering the image of the National Assembly. But on the other side of the political spectrum, on certain Republican benches, burlesque has been elevated to the rank of art and the right of government, usually concerned with the interest of the country and future generations, has borrowed the clothes of the trade union left. Yesterday, those who supported retirement at 65, are now trying not to deepen the reform proposed by the government but to reduce its scope. And, paradoxically, for fear of becoming the right “crutch” of the government, here they have become at their expense… its left cane. It must be said that the place seems vacant: the CFDT is also participating in this great reversal of roles and in 2023 took the mask of the CGT. Indeed, the reformist union is no longer a reformist and today reduces the dialogue to a threat, that of putting “France at a standstill”.
The government does not escape this upside-down world. What was announced as the great reform of the five-year term, and which however originally concerned only 1 in 4 French people, is now emptied of its substance. The system is neither more readable nor fairer insofar as the only rule is now that of the exception. Indeed, if in forty-three years, grandfather’s clause obliges, part of the special regimes will be abolished, new derogations are already multiplying with regard to long careers. These adjustments have a cost. First, a political cost insofar as the government, by yielding too soon to the unraveling of certain LRs, no longer has any room for maneuver to offer a way out of the crisis for the unions. They also have a financial cost: the reform will not bring in the 17.7 billion euros expected but only 10 billion, below the 13.5 billion euros deficit initially forecast for 2030 and which motivated this reform.
It is therefore several billion euros that will have to be found for the pay-as-you-go system to return to financial equilibrium. Billions still needed to sustainably sustain the pension system, billions that will call for a new debate and yet another reform that is undoubtedly even more complicated to carry out politically. Because if the government’s project has finally given birth to a mouse, public opinion has, for its part, indeed the feeling of climbing Everest to save the pay-as-you-go system. At the end of the carnival, if the right finds its reason and its courage, it will have, whatever happens, lost credibility and coherence to carry out this fight calmly during the next elections.
Far from being banned by Emmanuel Macron, the upheaval is more relevant than ever on the political scene. The carnival therefore did not take place in the processions of demonstrators: it took up residence on the benches of the Palais-Bourbon. However, a political formation did not take part in this strange celebration: the National Rally. The party has carefully stepped aside and remained discreet in recent weeks, thus avoiding discrediting itself both on the substance of the debates and on their holding. In 2027, unlike her opponents, Marine Le Pen will have more latitude to determine the position she wishes to take on the question of pensions: to propose a reform or not. She will then be able to wear the mask most in line with the state of public opinion at that time and in turn launch herself – unfortunately for us – into a game of political upheaval of a completely different kind…