(Paris) Very silent since the start of the pension reform crisis, Emmanuel Macron will address the French on Wednesday, after the official adoption of his flagship reform which has exacerbated political and social anger.
The French head of state, who will speak at midday (an unusual time for presidential speeches) in a live interview on the TF1 and France 2 channels, does not plan to dissolve Parliament, neither to reshuffle the government nor to call a referendum on pensions, his troops said.
He asked them to make “ proposals ” with a view to “ a change of method and agenda of the reforms ” supposed to mark his second five-year term. The president will speak to the French to “appease”, “well aware of the troubled moment”, but without “rushing”, summed up a participant in a meeting of the presidential camp on Tuesday at the Élysée.
But its strategy to bounce back promises to be difficult, anger remaining very strong in the country, and the government of Elisabeth Borne, which narrowly escaped a motion of censure on Monday, appears very weakened.
If the social protest, framed by the unions for two months, remained peaceful, the signs of radicalization have been multiplying for several days in France, where the protest continues almost everywhere.
According to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, “more than 1,200” demonstrations, undeclared, “sometimes violent”, have taken place throughout the territory since Thursday, the date of the use of 49.3 (allowing the adoption of a text without a vote) to adopt the disputed pension reform and its most decried measure, the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64.
New spontaneous demonstrations often interspersed with tensions with the police occurred on Monday evening.
In total, nearly 300 people were arrested in the various demonstrations, including 234 in Paris, according to a police source. While unions of lawyers, magistrates and left-wing politicians denounce police violence, the Prime Minister reminded the Assembly on Tuesday of “ the duty to set an example ” of the police.
The town hall of Paris has decided for its part to activate a “crisis unit”, the day after a fifth evening of spontaneous demonstrations against the pension reform in the capital, where 9,300 tonnes of garbage cans are still strewn on the sidewalks.
In addition to the renewable strike of garbage collectors in several cities, road traffic was disrupted Tuesday morning in Brittany by blockages and access to the Bugey nuclear power plant (east) blocked.
On the refinery side, several sites remain blocked. But the government evacuated the Donges oil terminal (west) overnight from Monday to Tuesday and announced the first requisitions of oil personnel in Fos-sur-Mer (south). Around 8% of service stations are out of petrol or diesel in France.
The CGT Énergie also promised new “targeted cuts” on Tuesday.
“ Nothing undermines the determination of the workers ”, warned the CGT, before a new day of action at the call of all the unions scheduled for Thursday.
The secretary general of the reformist union CFDT Laurent Berger said he was worried about the “anger” and “violence” that could be expressed as a result of the adoption of a law which had “no majority to the National Assembly”.
Politically, too, the pressure on the executive has not subsided, and the rejection of the motion of censure by only nine votes has given new energy to the opposition, on the left, on the right and on the far right.
On the left, the deputy of the radical left Alexis Corbière called on President Macron not to “repeat a kind of 49.3 verbal” during his television interview. If “ he comes back on TV to say the same thing, ‘I don’t care about your opinion, I impose’, Thursday’s demonstration will be even stronger”, he predicted.
With his Nupes allies, he is counting in particular on appeals to the Constitutional Council. The left is also asking for a shared initiative referendum (RIP), the admissibility of which the Elders must examine.
The National Rally also filed its appeal before the Constitutional Council on Tuesday for “ that this text falls into the dustbin of history and is put in the trash”.
