Since French President Emmanuel Macron’s televised address to the nation on December 10th, when he announced measures intended to appease the snowballing revolt of the so-called ‘Yellow Vest’ nationwide protests, he and his prime minister Édouard Philippe have been caught deeper and deeper into a quagmire of agitation.
Let us put to one side for a moment the catastrophic opinion survey results which show them both at record depths of unpopularity, and focus on the “economic and social emergency” legislation (based on the measures announced) that has been hurriedly adopted by parliament just before the end-of-year holidays.
The measures fail to satisfy anyone – beginning with the supporters of the Yellow Vest movement – and widely miss the intended target. The most striking example of this is the fact that at least 45% of those earning the minimum working wage will not receive the extra monthly 100 euros announced by Macron. Meanwhile, the exceptional 1,000-euro end-of-year bonus payment for employees (free of tax and social contributions), which Macron has urged large companies to make but which they are free to refuse, has caused significant frustration among those not in a position to receive such a payment, notably among staff in the public sector and among small companies. As for the exoneration of the CSG social welfare levy on pensions at or below a monthly 2,000 euros, which affect around 70% of pensioners, the result will be of little consequence given that pensions are in most cases unaligned to the rise in inflation.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The 13 hours of parliamentary debates over the new measures served to highlight their numerous pitfalls, the lack of a clear timetable for their enactment, and uncertainty over the numbers of people who will in reality benefit from them. There is also the question of the financing of the emergency plan, estimated to cost 10 billion euros, about 90% of which will in fact be funded by employees and tax payers.
But while all the principal figures of Macron’s ruling LREM party argue that the measures he announced on December 10th (see the official presentation, in French, here) are but a first stage in addressing the social revolt, the essential issue lies in the fierce political rejection of the president and his government who were elected just 18 months ago, amid which this year ends to the tune of calls for Macron to resign.
Despite all the government’s self-criticism, the handwringing in public, the talk of “humility”, of “listening” and “debate”, none of it will be sufficient to restore its relationship with the electorate. The French president might thank Priscillia Ludosky, one of the more high-profile Yellow Vest militants, for her “civil act”, and tell her that she was right to bring the frustrations to the fore, or invite citizens to “continue the dialogue” via email comments sent via a dedicated web page, everyone understands that the exercise simply underlines the vast divide that has opened up between Macron and public opinion.
Following such a major demonstration of revolt, which is both a massive rejection of the policies pursued over the past 18 months and the president’s style of exercising power, Macron must now engage in strong political acts. He must do so if he is to avoid ending his term in office in a state of immobility, procrastination and retreat – all of which he has accused his predecessors of succumbing to – and with it a severe defeat for him and his party in presidential and parliamentary elections next due in 2022.
That is the lesson of the last 50 years in French politics. In June 1968, following the civil upheaval of that spring, Charles de Gaulle regained the initiative by calling legislative elections that resulted in giving him a vast parliamentary majority. In the end, that proved insufficient, when the divisions and betrayals within de Gaulle’s own political camp which surfaced one year later, and a widespread fatigue with his regime, combined to see him lose an April 1969 referendum on his proposed reform to strengthen the country’s regional governance and to reduce the powers of the Senate. The defeat led to his immediate resignation.
Later, the 1983-1984 policy U-turn to austerity measures by socialist president François Mitterrand, elected in 1981, was the precursor to his party’s defeat in legislative elections in 1986 (when so-called “co-habitation” in French government first came about, whereby Mitterrand remained in office in tandem with a conservative government). The U-turn, neither declared as such nor explained, had been publicly led by his young prime minister, Laurent Fabius, a graduate of France’s elite administration school ENA and who, like those in office today, spoke of the necessity for reforms, for the modernisation of French society and a reconciliation with the business world.
When Mitterrand, after two seven-year terms as president, was succeeded in 1995 by conservative leader Jacques Chirac, the latter made no move to appease the deep social contestation that had gathered pace at the start of his mandate. Two years later, his government, led by prime minister Alain Juppé, was soundly defeated after the decision, in a move to regain authority but which backfired, to call early legislative elections. As a result, a new, five-year period of cohabitation began, when Chirac shared power with a socialist government.
In presidential and legislative elections in 2002, Chirac was returned to power alongside a conservative majority in parliament. In 2006, a protest movement by students and unions against his government’s introduction of a so-called “first-time employment contract” (CPE) which made it easier for employers to hire and fire under-26-year-olds, finalised the end of Chirac’s ageing regime, and removed any remaining hope for his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, of competing with his conservative UMP party rival Nicolas Sarkozy for nomination as the party’s candidate in the 2007 presidential elections.
Sarkozy, elected in 2007 and who quickly gained the nickname “president bling-bling” (something of a synonym of Macron’s sobriquet “president of the rich”), was himself defeated five years later for his cleaving personal style and his boasts of “never giving in” to large social movements against his reforms (like that of pension rights in 2010).
As for Sarkozy’s successor, the socialist François Hollande, elected in 2012 alongside a Socialist Party victory in legislative elections, he would finally not even be able to bid for a second term in office in 2017 after turning his back on his election manifesto almost as soon as he came to power, ignoring both his electorate and the protests among his own parliamentary majority.
Firing the prime minister no longer a cure
The machine that is the presidency in France’s Fifth Republic devours those who occupy it. It also ensures they pay dearly for political mistakes. When the previous seven-year presidential term (which was reduced to the current five-year mandate in 2002) together with political cohabitation (prompted by contrasting five-year parliamentary mandates) provided French heads of state with a sort of political second chance, the five-year term and the excesses of solitary power prohibit the adoption of half-measures, or allowing time to take its course.
In face of the current crisis, the logical first step under the system of the Fifth Republic to is to replace the prime minister. The strategy has been applied many times by past presidents attempting to demonstrate that they were heeding public opinion, expressed either in intermediary elections or during social conflicts, and that a turning point had come. Examples include when de Gaulle sacked Michel Debré during the conflict over Algerian independence; Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (in office 1974-1981) forced out Jacques Chirac in 1976 during divisions among the ruling centre-right; Mitterrand fired Pierre Mauroy in 1984 during the introduction of austerity measures, and later Michel Rocard (in 1991) and his successor Édith Cresson (1992) after the socialists’ defeat in regional elections. Another was Jean-Pierre Raffarin, ousted under the presidency of Jacques Chirac in 2005 following the victory of the “no” vote in the referendum on the adoption of a European constitution.
But the advent of the five-year presidential term largely removes the effectiveness of the strategy, the prime minister being regarded as little more than an aide, or a “collaborator” as Nicolas Sarkozy described his prime minister François Fillon (who served throughout Sarkozy’s term). Since the alignment of the dates of the presidential and legislative elections, the latter held just weeks after the presidential vote, the president’s ruling majority is directly driven by his own election, making the prime minister little more than a cabinet super-director.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Added to this in the current context is the nature of Emmanuel Macron’s election in May 2017. His prime minister, Édouard Philippe, came from the conservative Les Républicains party and, having never been a member of Macron’s LREM party, has no political base. His one and only advantage is found in the vacuum that surrounds the president, with the LREM’s lack of human resources in the shape of weighty political personalities in its midst. If Philippe were to be replaced, it would change little in the political landscape and equilibrium of the ruling majority, such as it is that Macron has chosen, ever since his election, to position himself in the front line.
As a result, the French president has just two possible solutions in terms of a political response to this significant current crisis. These are to either announce a referendum or to call early legislative elections.
Taking Macron’s December 10th televised address to the nation on its word, it announced a major turning point and a new future programme. Declaring that a large-scale national debate would be held over the first three months of 2019, he said: “It is also with our collective project that we must reconnect […] These substantial changes which call for a profound and shared reflection demand an unprecedented debate […] We will not return to the normal course of our lives, as was too often the case in the past amid similar crises, without anything being truly understood and without anything being changed. We are at a historic moment for our country.”
That represented a funeral oration for the programmes and speeches of his presidential election campaign, as also does the launching of a large national consultation process. Given the mobilisation of the Yellow Vest movement, and the determination expressed by its supporters to continue their actions, it is most unlikely that the president and his government can succeed in reducing the forthcoming national debate to an expression of political platitudes.
That is at any rate what Chantal Jouanno, president of France’s National Commission for Public Debate, the CNDP, intends to avoid. “Our role is to ensure the respect of citizens’ views, that this expression is not suffocated by those who are used to speaking publicly,” she told radio station Europe 1 in an interview last Thursday. “We will then make sure that this expression does not end up [ignored] in a drawer.”
This "expression" has been made by the Yellow Vest movement for almost two months, relaying public opinion which, regular surveys have shown, massively supports the movement. It voices three principal demands that dominate the catalogue of grievances. These are for justice in taxation policy, for equality and for profound political reform (and not only the introduction of “Citizens’ initiative referendums”, a proposal for referendums to be held if they garner the support of more than 700,000 people online). It is hard to imagine that they would not figure in the CNDP report on the final results of the debates.
It would then be down to Emmanuel Macron to transform the demands into political acts, or at the least to answer them. For him, the stakes will be clear: to recover his credibility and regain legitimacy by demonstrating his ability to arbitrate between the demands with policies that serve the greatest number. To do that, is there any other path than to turn to electoral consultation? Would not the unusual process of a “grand debate” not force him to return before the electorate?
The French president, in Bonapartist style or that of a Jupiter-like head of state, has continually employed admirative references to Charles de Gaulle, even adopting some of the late general’s expressions and symbolism. Will he follow his claim to Gaullism to the point of launching a referendum on a reform of French institutions, as did de Gaulle in 1962 on the question of granting independence to Algeria, and also on introducing the public election of France’s president instead of his nomination by a collegial system?
He might well do so, given that his planned legislation on constitutional reform has become delayed since July, amid the scandal over his personal security advisor, Alexandre Benalla, who was filmed beating up and ‘arresting’ May Day march participants while dressed as a police officer (and with the connivance of police officials). The reform notably has little chance of gaining approval from the Senate, if indeed it ever got as far as the Upper House.
The holding of a referendum on propositions that have emerged from the Yellow Vest protests (such as the so-called “Citizens’ initiative referendums” or the introduction of proportional representation) would not necessarily be synonymous with defeat. To the contrary, if successful it would contribute to retrieving the legitimacy that is now necessary.
On the other hand, to call early legislative elections could be viewed as more complex and dangerous; complex, because his LREM party faces a poor result in the elections of members of the European Parliament to be held on May 26th 2019, and dangerous because the LREM’s lack of organisation, and the weakness of its parliamentarians and militants, bode for defeat outside of urban constituencies.
Choosing between these different scenarios and finding a response to the political obstacles will be the challenges for Macron and his government over the coming three months, and the president’s political future will depend on those decisions. Eighteen months after an election victory which he had misinterpreted – it was less of a vote of support for him than a rejection of his far-right second-round opponent, Marine Le Pen – he is now back at the starting point, having to begin again from scratch but without the element of surprise, and pulling the ball and chain of a rejection of the results so far of his policies. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name a political leader who has succeeded in surviving such a situation.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.