French government to face no-confidence vote over
pension age rise
Macron’s decision to push through changes without vote
led to widespread protests over weekend
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris
@achrisafis
Sun 19 Mar
2023 16.14 GMT
The French
government will face a no-confidence vote on Monday, as MPs said they feared
for their safety, strike action intensified and police banned demonstrators
from parts of central Paris after Emmanuel Macron’s decision to push through an
unpopular rise in the pension age without a parliament vote.
Opposition
politicians have filed two no-confidence motions in protest at the government
using controversial executive powers to raise the state pension age from 62 to
64.
The French
president decided last week that the government should use article 49.3 of the
constitution to bypass parliament, because he feared it could not garner enough
votes for the pension changes.
After two
months of protests against the pensions changes and on-off strikes headed by a
rare united front of all trade unions, anger continued to mount during the
weekend, with demonstrations in many towns. More rail, air and school strikes
are planned over the next week.
The two
no-confidence motions are seen as unlikely to pass, as they would require an
unprecedented grouping together of all the warring opposition parties.
There would
have to be a united front across the political spectrum – from the radical left
to Marine Le Pen’s far-right and Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing Les Républicains –
in order to meet the high threshold of an absolute majority of 287 votes.
One motion
was proposed by the centrist group, Liot, as a kind of multiparty no-confidence
motion, co-signed by the Nupes alliance of parties on the left. Another
no-confidence motion has been proposed by Le Pen’s far-right National Rally
party, which has 88 MPs.
The only
way a no-confidence vote would pass would be with the support of a large number
of MPs from Les Républicains. But the party’s leader, Éric Ciotti, has ordered
his MPs not to vote against the government on the grounds it could lead to
“chaos”.
Ciotti’s
constituency office in the southern city of Nice was ransacked at the weekend.
Windows were broken and graffiti on the walls threatened riots unless he
supported the no-confidence vote.
“They want
through violence to put pressure on my vote on Monday. I will never yield to
the new disciples of the Terror,” Ciotti wrote on Twitter.
Other MPs
from Les Républicains party said they were receiving hundreds of threatening
emails a day.
“It’s as if
tomorrow they want to decapitate us,” said Frédérique Meunier from the Corrèze,
telling BFMTV that the emails politicians were receiving amounted to
harassment. The constituency offices of MPs from Macron’s centrist Renaissance
party were also vandalised.
A poll in
the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday showed Macron’s popularity has dropped to its
lowest since the gilets jaunes anti-government protests four years ago.
As police
brace for a week of unpredictable, spontaneous protests in cities and small
towns across France, the mood of anger was likened to the start of the gilets
jaunes protests, when demonstrators in small towns and the countryside
congregated on roundabouts and at street protests. The protests were initially
against fuel tax rises but evolved to encompass a wider lack of trust in the
political system.
More than
160 people were arrested across France by the early hours of Sunday morning
after the third consecutive night of street protests since the government
pushed through the pensions changes. Police used tear gas in Paris as bins were
set alight and there were clashes with demonstrators in Bordeaux and Nantes.
Several people were arrested in Lyon after police said “groups of violent
individuals” triggered clashes.
Paris
police authorities continued to ban demonstrators gathering at the Place de la
Concorde opposite parliament after clashes with protesters last week.
“The reform
must be implemented,” the economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, told Le Parisien
newspaper. He said there was a right to demonstrate but “violence cannot be
tolerated”.
A rare
alliance of France’s main trade unions will continue to mobilise to try to
force a U-turn on the pensions changes. A day of nationwide industrial action,
which will affect trains, air travel and schools, is scheduled for Thursday.
Strike
action was stepped up at the weekend, with refinery shut-downs and petrol
queues beginning in the south, even though authorities said supplies were high
enough to avoid shortages. Philippe Martinez from the leftwing CGT trade union
urged bin workers in Paris to continue their two-week-long refuse strike, which
has left more than 10,000 tonnes of garbage piling up across across half of
Paris neighbourhoods.
One key
concern was the crucial baccalauréat exams for high-school leavers, which begin
on Monday just as teachers’ unions called for strikes. Supervision of the exams
could be affected if staff strike. Martinez said it was important that the
exams took place in “good conditions”. Laurent Berger of the moderate CFDT
union said the exams must not be perturbed as high school students were already
under a lot of stress.
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