Pension reforms: a long-awaited speech by Emmanuel Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron, March 16, 2023. © MICHEL EULER / AFP

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1 min

Very discreet, even absent during the debate on the pension reform, Emmanuel Macron decided to express himself this Wednesday by answering the questions of the presenters of the newspapers of 13h on TF1 and France 2. The parliamentary sequence finished, the text adopted, the president wants to try to regain control while the protest continues, especially in the street. Emmanuel Macron is playing big.

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It's a bit of a double for Emmanuel Macron. Left, he managed to calm the spirits. Double, it irritates even more the protesters, analyzes Valérie Gas, of the political service. But he has no choice, after a heated debate in Parliament, a 49.3 that does not pass, while every day the French sometimes demonstrate in violence, the president had to intervene.

He did not wait until after the vote on the motions of censure to announce when and how he would speak. An interview at midday on the newspaper slot that we watch a lot in the regions and not at 20pm, the time when demonstrators gather in cities.

Before this meeting, Emmanuel Macron staged his return to the arena by multiplying the consultations of his government, the leaders and parliamentarians of the majority. Some echoes of these meetings have judiciously filtered out. Enough to know that for the moment, the president does not envisage any reshuffle, dissolution, or referendum. So how to regain control in a blocked political situation and avoid paralysis? This is the challenge of his intervention: to give the impression of moving forward, but not of giving in.

What do MPs expect from Emmanuel Macron's speech?

Talk and not stay on the sidelines all the oppositions demanded it from Emmanuel Macron and even in the president's own camp, where we want words of appeasement. "It must take the full measure of the period we have just gone through, which testifies to a democratic fatigue of the country and to which we must provide a response of great ambition. He must tell us where he wants to take the country, "says Gilles Le Gendre, Renaissance MP, at the microphone of Charlotte Urien-Tomaka, of the political service.

A speech, but a priori, no announcement likely to calm the oppositions. "I do not expect anything from this speech," said Mathilde Panot, president of the group La France insoumise in the National Assembly. If not, either she's going to remain completely inflexible, or he's even going to add fuel to the fire because that's what they seem to want to do. When you have a president who, while we are studying a motion of censure following a 49-3, explains to you that he wants to continue the democratic progress of the text. I don't see what it's called other than provocation.

Even under bell on the side of the extreme right. "We do not expect anything since he has already said that he would do nothing, that he would not announce anything," said Julien Odoul, deputy of the National Rally. So, we will listen and suffer the new arm of honor to the French people despite the political crisis, there will be no change, that everything is fine. We go into the wall honking.

Emmanuel Macron will have a hard time convincing an uncompromising opposition that intends to continue the protest.

►To listen also: Guest France - Pension reform: "There is a concern to de-dramatize" by Emmanuel Macron

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• France
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