France. Out of Order

In France we are living through another of those fairly frequent periods in which filling the gas tank takes much more effort than simply driving to the nearest gas station. When “social movements” happen, as mass protests and strikes are called here, the refineries are strategically blocked first, and as a result yellow covers saying “hors service” soon appear on the fuel nozzles. Out of order. Those of us who live in Strasbourg and other border towns are privileged: if fuel runs out on the French side, we drive across the border to Germany. Unless, of course, the bridges leading there are blocked. That has happened too. For people who don’t live near the border, who in a country as big as France are of course the vast majority, the blockade of refineries has much more far-reaching and unpleasant consequences. This is especially true for those who have to drive to work, school or the doctor.

In France, people don’t protest with kid gloves. They strike in such a way that as many people as possible suffer the consequences as much as possible. Paris has been drowning in garbage for weeks. Using public transport, from the metro to trains and planes, is a lottery. In city centers, the smell of freshly baked croissants has been replaced by the stench of burning car tires. In schools there are classes one day and none the next. In many other countries, such tactics would quickly boomerang on the strikers and turn public opinion against them and their demands. In France it is exactly the opposite. Public opinion, by a considerable majority, in spite of everything and increasingly, understands and supports the strikers’ demands, in this case concerning the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64. Protest is part of French culture and folklore. Alongside the bust of Marianne, who represents the French Republic and its values, an extended middle finger could also be used as a symbol of French society. When the French are fed up with those in power, they express their feelings in a very direct way. They have done so since 1789.

Intergenerational solidarity

It is also fascinating that, at least when it comes to protests, there is incredible intergenerational solidarity in France. Compared with our part of the world, where protests about pensions and pensioners struggle to attract anyone without thoroughly gray hair, in France students and high school pupils also protest against changes to pension legislation. Not yet as massively as on many occasions in the past, but if that changes, Macron will be in even greater trouble. In this respect, things have changed over the last fifty-five years. If in May 1968 the young rioted against the old, today they protest for them. Everyone takes part in the debate on pension legislation. People talk about it at work, pupils at school. Tara, my ten-year-old daughter, from whom you otherwise have to drag words out with pliers, asks at the front door as soon as she gets home from school whether this Macron really had no other option than to use 49.3. That is, of course, the article of the French Constitution that allows the government to pass laws by decree, which was used this time too, because the government feared it did not have enough votes in parliament.

And yet. The situation France is going through today is not merely a consequence of the French passion for protest. The anger and discontent are real; this is not folklore. To someone watching events from abroad, it may seem that the French are overdoing it. After all, in most Western societies it is accepted that, because of demographic changes alone, the pension system must be adjusted, since the existing one will sooner or later break down. The change introduced in France, raising the retirement age to 64—especially considering that the new law provides for a whole range of exceptions for specific professions—is not excessively radical either. With the increase, the retirement threshold will move closer to the OECD average. Many other countries have also embarked on changes to their pension legislation, and although these are very sensitive issues everywhere, as a rule there has been no such unrest elsewhere.

Permanent pension reform

But what is sensitive elsewhere is sensitive squared in France. The French have been reforming their pension system more or less constantly since Mitterrand’s victory a good four decades ago. One of his first fulfilled campaign promises was lowering the retirement age from 65 to 60. If someone made a film about France’s pension reform shenanigans, it could be called Forward into the Past. Incidentally, Mitterrand did not change the retirement age through the normal legislative procedure either, but, like Macron now, by decree. The state of emergency and the blockade of normal life are very reminiscent of the time when I came to France almost thirty years ago. Then-President Jacques Chirac sent his Prime Minister Alain Juppé to pull the chestnuts out of the fire; Juppé proposed (merely) extending contributions for the special regimes but, after three weeks of protests involving millions of people who completely blocked the country, was forced to give in and withdraw the proposal. That happened on December 21, 1995, the day on which Emmanuel Macron, a pupil at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris’s fifth arrondissement, celebrated his eighteenth birthday. If, while celebrating with his classmates, he had any attention left for what was going on around him, he could have drawn many a useful lesson from that time for use today. Not least the words of the old fox who then sat in the chair he occupies today. “Shit flies in squadrons,” Jacques Chirac liked to say.

The “notorious” Article 49.3 of the French Constitution

As I write, there are between one and three million people on the streets of France, depending on whether you believe the police or the organizers. Bordeaux city hall is on fire; flights are being canceled because kerosene is running out. Parisians are worried about rats. Public radio stations are playing classical music. The French are, yet again, very angry. One of the reasons for this is, in my opinion, specifically local. France has a system of government that irritates people. Since Macron came to power, it has irritated them squared. Despite swearing by equality, fraternity and liberty, France is a very centralized, bureaucratic and elitist state. That does not mean it is not democratic, but its characteristics—a presidential system that concentrates most political power in one person, a relatively narrow circle of people who dominate politics and business and who attended the same schools, and also peculiarities such as the “notorious” Article 49.3 of the French Constitution—give people the feeling that power is remote from them and that they have no influence over it. And so they take to the streets. In fact, similar constitutional arrangements, in which the government ties the adoption of a law to a vote of confidence, exist in many other systems and do not attract much criticism. The peculiarity of France is that the link between the decree and the confidence vote is not automatic and simultaneous, hence so much criticism of it being “undemocratic.” Macron’s style of governing, which many experience as arrogance, only adds fuel to the fire. Here, perhaps, lies an important lesson for some politicians closer to home.

The troubles of “non-extreme politicians”

In a television appearance this week, Macron (very slightly) put on sackcloth and ashes and said that his only regret was that he had not managed to convince people with his proposals. And he is absolutely right about that. He did not manage it. And it is not only he who has this problem, but most “non-extreme” politicians in European countries, whether left, right or center. Politics today has trouble pushing through even changes that are objectively in people’s interest. Thirty years of waiting for money to trickle down from the top, of forcing an economic doctrine that privatizes profits and socializes losses, have led a great many people to stop believing. Not only in the politicians in power; they have also lost faith in the political system those politicians represent. Ever since the end of the Second World War, liberal democracy’s contract with citizens has been based on the promise and expectation that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. Fewer and fewer people believe that today. The moment social solidarity and social justice become mere rhetorical platitudes or, worse, are treated by politics as an unnecessary cost and a threat to the economy, and the moment hope for a better future is replaced by fear, liberal democracy is on the brink of collapse. Populists offer no solutions, but they have the advantage because they respond to popular rage and thereby pour fuel on the fire. How this ended in Europe in the past we ought to know, but we have evidently forgotten.

To tell the truth, among the crowd of politicians who flirt with neoliberalism, Macron may not even be the worst. Part of his problem is that he gives the impression that he is. Of everything people saw and heard in his interview, what irritated them most was that he came across as too smug. A president for the rich. France is up in arms today, but I believe life will soon return, at least on the surface, to its usual course. Beneath the gray facade of normality, however, it will keep smoldering. The traditional political parties, whether left, center or right, are running out of breath. The only ones with the wind in their sails, waiting for their chance, are the far-left populist Mélenchon and the far-right populist Le Pen. Macron will probably survive this crisis one way or another and remain until the end of his term. What will happen after that, no one dares predict for now. The horizon is darkening. The squadrons are approaching.