The French government on Thursday announced it will use an article of the constitution that allows it to adopt as legislation its proposed and hotly contested reform of the pensions system without a vote in Parliament. In this op-ed analysis of the move, Mediapart political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani argues that it is not only the latest manifestation of President Emmanuel Macron’s top-down exercise of power, but it may also represent one too many, opening up a profound crisis into which his second and final term in office is now plunged.
French prime minister Élisabeth Borne on Thursday announced that her government, which has no absolute majority in the National Assembly, the most powerful of Parliament’s two houses, is to use Article 49-3 of the constitution which allows it to force through the chamber, without a vote, its hotly contested draft legislation to reform the pension system. In doing so, France has been plunged into a political, social and institutional crisis.
