Renaud Lambert, journalist at Le Monde diplomatique, discusses the nationwide anti-pension reform protests in France, which have consisted of over a million people taking to the streets on more than one occasion. He underscores how French President Emmanuel Macron’s tax cuts for the wealthy have increased the current deficit, exposing how workers will now need to work longer to make up for the decreases in government revenue.
Talia Baroncelli
Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. I’ll shortly be joined by French journalist Renaud Lambert to speak about Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms and the massive protests against this in France. If you enjoy this content, please go to the website, theAnalysis.news, and hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen. You can also get on the newsletter; that way, you’ll be notified every time there’s a new episode. Consider going to our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news, hit like and subscribe on all the videos. I’ll see you soon.
Joining me now to speak about the French pension reforms is Renaud Lambert. He’s a journalist at Le Monde diplomatique. Thank you so much for joining me, Renaud.
Renaud Lambert
Thank you for having me.
Talia Baroncelli
Why don’t we start talking about the response to Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms? We’ll get into the details of this throughout the interview because Macron extended the retirement age from 62 to 64, and there are lots of really nitty gritty details around that. Why don’t we first start talking about the eventful past few months and how so many people in France have been going out on the streets and protesting for weeks on end?
Renaud Lambert
Yeah. To give you an idea of where we are at in France, at the moment, the authorities have passed a new law whereby it’s forbidden to walk in the street with pots and pans. Why have they done that? Because people have taken to accompany ministers and the president wherever they go to talk or to inaugurate something. They are there, surrounding them, beating on pots and pans to mock them. This is something that we have never seen in France before.
I’ll go back to where it started, but at this stage, this social movement is something that is incredibly joyful, happy, and humorous. The anger has turned into mockery. The power is no longer legitimate, and people make fun of them. It’s gotten to the stage where ministers avoid having to come out of the ministries for fear of being welcomed by these types of gatherings. The Minister for the Interior, two days ago, pretended that he had cancelled the meeting in order for the gathering not to be there when he actually went. So they have to organize these types of things in order to not be faced with people’s discontent. Even more than discontent at this stage is people’s total, well, I guess, irony.
How did we get there? Initially, when the reform was presented, nobody was sure what was going to happen. Trade unions in France tend to organize marches, but it’s a one-off march, and we don’t know where it’s going to go. They were quite big. They gathered over a million people not once or twice but up to 10 times. I think we’ve passed the 12 demonstrations. The amount of time the government failed to address people’s anger at the reform has increased that anger to a level that is quite rare in France.
Now, apart from the initial trade union movement, a lot of young people have gathered and helped organize these demonstrations. This has raised a lot of questions because people have said, “Well, why do young people care about retirement?” Of course, right-wing pundits have complained about how young people only think about retiring and don’t think about work. I think what people have understood and the younger people have understood is that the reason why people don’t want that reform is because retirement is the end of everything they don’t agree with. The power of your employer, all the little vexations you receive at work, and everything that doesn’t work are supposed to end when you finally retire. Fighting for retirement is fighting against everything that is not functioning in society, which means that this movement against pension reform is a lot larger than a movement against a specific attempt at increasing the age at which you can retire.
Talia Baroncelli
It has unified so many people across, I would say, maybe not even the political spectrum but the age spectrum. As you said, there are so many young people out on the streets, older people, and I guess not just people from the Left, but all sorts of people of different political ideologies are protesting. In particular, the unions, how have the unions come together in this particular instance to protest against these reforms, more so than they did in the past?
Renaud Lambert
An answer about the union. I want to bring to your attention the fact that, that cross-spectrum of mobilization is quite unheard of. A couple of days ago, a very upper-class conservative politician gathered with the leader of the CGT [General Confederation of Labour], which is very red, and linked to the Communist Party. They gathered to unite against that project. As you said, across the board, there are a lot of complaints, whether it is regarding the law, the specific aspects of the law, or the way Macron went about it.
It is true that the way trade unions have united is quite unique. I think it’s the first time in about ten years. One of the reasons for this is that the attempt at promoting social partnership, unions that developed in 1980 through the 1990s with a specific trade union in France, CFDT [French Democratic Confederation of Labour], has come to an end. Macron, as opposed to previous presidents, didn’t take the time to organize his project or his bill with that specific trade union. He didn’t take the time to discuss it with them. They had a specific proposition, a proposal that I didn’t agree with personally and most of the Left didn’t agree with, but he could have negotiated this with them. He didn’t do that. So he failed to organize his support base in the trade union movements, which meant the road was clear for unions to unite against this attempt at bulldozing any type of concertation.
Talia Baroncelli
Is that because primarily in the past few decades, there have been more so-called ‘yellow unions,’ unions which weren’t necessarily completely independent or didn’t have members who were paying for the union to represent them, but they were more tied to the state. Has that really played into this?
Renaud Lambert
Well, we don’t have ‘yellow unions’ that would have that much of an impact. But part of the Left, and I would have been guilty of this, would have tended to call so-called social democratic unions ‘yellow.’ There is a saying in the social movement in France about one of the leading unions in the current demonstrations against the bill. A couple of years ago, the saying was that if employers wanted to impose a golden chain on workers, that union would negotiate the weight of the ball. I don’t know if it’s clear, but they would negotiate. They are negotiating, and they would sign agreements. So, of course, they played a particular part in the reorganization of labour regulations. What happened this time that was different from the past was that the president didn’t discuss with them and didn’t take into account their own proposal for the reform. So he went into the fight without their support, and they’re making him pay for this.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, I think 70% of people in a recent poll said that they don’t agree with the reforms, and something like 90% of people who are economically active don’t agree with the reforms. In the first few decades of the 1900s in France, when there were big social movements, there was lots of negotiation with the government, maybe less so in the past few decades. But what seems to me, at least, so very specific about Emmanuel Macron and his party is that there’s no sense whatsoever of the protests being a form of political participation. He says people voted in the elections, and that was their way of expressing their political views. People going out on the streets, I respect them. I don’t think he actually does. He says he respects them, but he doesn’t see that as a legitimate political act of voicing what their views or grievances would be. I recently saw, I think it was, Jacques Marilossian, who was a former MP of the Renaissance Party, of Macron’s party, saying that I’m ashamed of these people who don’t recognize that we have a pension reform issue. How can they not get this through their heads? Why are they still demonstrating? So it seems like there’s a real contempt on the part of the government towards the people and also the right to protest. Are you seeing that as well?
Renaud Lambert
Oh, yeah. Big time. There’s an attitude to Macron. It is a very aristocratic attitude. We have compiled little sentences, little snippets of things that he said, which are humiliating people looking for a job or people demonstrating. There is a very superior, condescending tone to him. I think he politically represents a last attempt at the ancien régime to perpetuate itself. When he was elected first, we had witnessed the collapse of the traditional Left and traditional right-wing in France, as in many places: Greece and Spain. Macron turned up as something new. He received support from the traditional Left and traditional Right. That meant that in order to get him to be President, they had to abandon the idea that you had pluralism in that democracy, that you could choose either the Left or the Right because they all supported him. It was him or chaos. At this stage, we have seen that he’s pushed the same logic further. At this stage, the system is quite ready to impose a very high degree of violence in order to have its way.
Now, another reason why people are mobilizing is that the government has been lying so much, and the demonstration has shown that it’s been lying on a lot of issues. One had appealed to quite a few people. During the campaign, Macron said, “I’m going to do reform, a pension reform, and everybody will receive €1,200, no matter what.” I actually just listened to the clip again. One day there was this economist that came to the number one radio station in France, and he was talking with another economist, someone close to the government. He said, “Well, no, that’s not true.” The journalists were there saying, “What? But the government has been saying that it was. Yeah, but the government has been lying.” He made the example that what had been presented as a measure that would offer everybody at least €1,200 was a pure lie. There were other lies of this type.
For instance, we have to do this reform because we need to balance the budget. It’s been demonstrated that the reason why we need to balance the budget is because Macron cut taxes on rich people. So he created a deficit that he then needs to compensate for, and he’s giving to the rich. It’s literally taking from the poor people that depend on their pensions to live. He also said, “Well, we need to do this because we need to reassure the financial markets. We are going to get a rate downgrade if we don’t do this.” But then we did get a rate downgrade. The reason why we did, I think, is because the demonstrations were so big. As you know, rating agencies, they don’t rate countries; they rate populations. The French people saw their rate downgraded because they were so militant and adamant that they would not accept that reform.
So at this stage, there’s no political base. There’s no rationale that the government can use to say, we need this reform. All their arguments have been destroyed. I think the situation in France at the moment is a tug of war. It is similar to the one that opposed Margaret Thatcher to the miners in the U.K. in ’84 and Reagan to air traffic controllers earlier on in the ’80s. I think the stakes are quite high.
For the social movement, if we fail to get Macron to cancel this reform, it will take a toll. Seeds have been planted, and perhaps we can talk about it. Seeds have been planted. But there were more than 12 demonstrations, with over a million people taking to the street. Polls are sky high saying how much French people don’t want this. So losing would be quite hard. For Macron, at some stage, the private sector and people are going to pick up their phones and say, “Well, you need to do something because we can’t work anymore. This has to stop. The institutions are being delegitimized. You have to stop this. It can’t go on.” If that happens, and I’m crossing my fingers, when that happens, Macron will find it very hard to carry on with his neoliberal project.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, I think it’s also very ironic that Macron is often one of the first people to condemn authoritarianism and autocrats in other parts of the world. But if you look at his own approach and policies in France, he’s been rather anti-democratic. The government has used this very controversial Article 49.3, where they’ve pushed pension reform using this method. It bypasses the National Assembly or the Parliament, which means that it’s the Senate who then votes on it, and the Senate is an unelected body. So it is a very undemocratic way of pushing through reforms. I think this year alone, they’ve already used this mechanism ten times.
Renaud Lambert
That is right.
Talia Baroncelli
Of course, it is in the Constitution, so it still is technically legal, but it’s probably not the best way to engage and address an issue which clearly has lots of opposition. People on the street have demonstrated that opposition. So you speak about how he’s delegitimized, or he’s eroded a lot of these democratic institutions by doing so. I wonder, what will be the response to that long term from these social movements? The next election is a few years down the road, and Macron already has a very, very thin coalition or mandate because he didn’t have a large majority. The election went into a runoff into the second stage, where he beat Marine Le Pen. So how do you think this is going to impact social movements, in general, over the next few years?
Renaud Lambert
Well, I wouldn’t try and predict anything, but I think the situation is as I said. Neoliberal social democratic Left and traditional conservatism joined forces to push Macron to become the next president. Something is going to rise against this.
Now, in France, we have a very strong far-right movement that is there waiting for its turn to take the presidency. Chances are that for part of the population, Marine Le Pen, who embodies that movement, is going to be a solution. In France, we talk about [foreign language 00:18:55], which means anybody but them. For some people, Marine Le Pen will mean that it’s not the old traditional political people that are in power. Of course, there is also a far-right movement composed of people who believe in that ideology. We’ve seen them marching in the streets of France last week. So that is something that will be there and that we will need to fight against.
At the same time, there is a Left force in the Parliament, and they’ve been doing a very good job. I think the social movement will blow into their sails. Now, to what extent? It’s difficult to say. The next presidential election is in [20]27.
On the trade union side, the opposition to the reform has been a lot stronger than the upper echelons expected. That has imposed some soul-searching on the main trade unions. Now, they have had to turn to reorient their line to the Left. There were major conventions for both CFDT and CGT, leading to a left-wing inflection. That is positive, obviously. But the most positive aspect is the amount of young people taking to the street at the moment. They are encountering firsthand what a police state is; a new horrible state that is only kept together by people being clubbed over the head. Now, obviously, that is very sad, but it’s a very intense political school that French streets are very intense. It is a new political school at the moment.
Talia Baroncelli
Why don’t we talk about the actual reforms? We’ve spoken about the social movements and the political context, but perhaps we could get into the reform itself because I’ve seen all sorts of information and reporting on it, which is a bit confusing at times. My understanding is that Macron has increased the pension age from 62 to 64, but that you would have to work for a minimum of 43 years or pay contributions for at least 43 years, whereas before, it was 42 years. According to the reforms, after these 43 years, then you would get €1,200 a month. But there are certain exceptions for people who have more physically demanding jobs. Is that really the case? And who actually is disproportionately affected by these reforms? I mean, there have been talks about women who have kids and that sort of thing, or is that just a side issue?
Renaud Lambert
The reform is mainly impacting women because it means that women who have been working and have paid into the system for 42-43 years will still have to work until they are 64. They will have to give another two years into the system, even though their right to retirement is already achieved.
As I said, Macron is trying to balance a budget, and the pressure is coming from the European Union. His plan is to reach the level of a 3% public deficit by [20]27. In order to do this, he needs to fill the hole he’s dug by reducing taxes on richer people. So he’s cutting on public spending because he’s cut on earnings for the state. So that is the logic that he’s following.
Talia Baroncelli
There was also, I think, a pension reform committee of the government which came up with, I think, eight different scenarios in the future. I didn’t look into this in detail, but it seemed like all of the eight scenarios looked pretty bad. Was that a cover-up to cover up the fact that they’re just not doing enough taxation on the rich, and they’re treating this issue as if it’s, oh, we now have a problem? We need to ensure that people work longer so that we can pay for people’s pensions.
Renaud Lambert
The organization you’re referring to is called COR [Conseil d’orientation des retraites]. They did have a report saying that in the next couple of years, there would be some deficit, but only for a couple of years. The government used that to say, “Well, we are facing chaos.” The government actually talked about a €100 billion deficit. They turned it into something major. There’s no problem in financing the pension system in France if you don’t touch taxation. If you decide to destroy the system by preventing sources of earnings for the state, obviously, you’re running the balance. It’s a created problem.
Talia Baroncelli
Just to be a bit contrarian, France does spend 30% of its GDP on social welfare. So could you make the argument that they really are… this deficit is real and that they can’t come up with this money from any other source, and that they’re already paying so much into the system. People are getting paid for maternity leave, and that’s not the case in a lot of other countries. They get other sorts of subsidies, so they should stop complaining and work a bit longer.
Renaud Lambert
Well, I appreciate the effort to be contrarian. A lot of the media are already doing it in France, but not on the analysis. More seriously, France is a country where GDP is highly dependent on consumption. If you prevent people from consuming, then it’s the entire economy that is going to collapse. As I said, there was no financing problem with the system before Macron actually cut taxes on the rich. Why did he do that? He said that if we cut taxes on the rich, then it’s going to trickle down, and jobs are going to be created. Jobs have not been created. So basically, you have the same argument whereby you need to take care of the rich and the poor need to make an effort because tomorrow, this is going to pay off. It hasn’t paid off. So really, there’s no reason why, even trying to be contrarian, you should do this to the pension system in France.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, he has been trying to answer some questions on corporate greed. Just seeing some of his speeches. It’s not like he’s not aware of the fact that companies are profiting from inflation, from the COVID crisis, from supply chain issues, and that sort of thing. I did hear him say that companies which have extremely high profits should direct some of these profits to the workers. They should make sure that stock buybacks are not allowed. But as far as I’ve seen, I haven’t seen any concrete measures as to how the workers in those companies would benefit from those profits. Have you seen anything?
Renaud Lambert
No, I haven’t. Obviously, all these snippets need to be put into the context where they appear. Obviously, Macron is going through a very difficult patch. Macron has been the President under which the richer part of the population has increased its wealth fastest. He’s called the ‘Président des riches,’ the ‘President for the rich.’ He hasn’t done anything to limit their capacity to get richer. Now he’s discovering that discourse. He’s making these speeches at the moment. His Minister for the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, is famous for having asked companies to try and make an effort. Please, I’m asking companies to try and make an effort not to raise prices. That’s the extent of how much they want to fight against corporate greed and the like. So no, Macron is not going to curtail the way the rich are becoming richer in France at the moment. Definitely not.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, we were speaking about how a lot of young people have been out on the streets because they know that this erosion of democracy and also these neoliberal policies will ultimately affect them, regardless of when they actually start working. But which generation is actually right now most affected by this reform? Is it the people who are born in the mid-60s to mid-70s?
Renaud Lambert
People who are most affected by the actual reform are people who are today between 55 and 60 years of age. Obviously, it’s not the younger people who are taking to the street at the moment. There is a conflation of events. Now, the way Macron has sent police forces against demonstrations, this has happened as well during the demonstration in favor of climate responsibility, very radical, root-based movement’s, militant green activists. They faced a lot of police repression as well. It is the same for the trade unions and people taking to the street against the pension reform. This has created a realization. People have understood that it’s all part and parcel. The pension reform, the promotion of pollution, that logic whereby you need to produce more and more neoliberalism, all of this, this is called Macron today. People are joining forces against him because he’s become the embodiment of everything that is not working.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, it’s also very telling that the initial name of the party, En Marche, is actually his initials, Emmanuel Macron. So that really does show how full of himself and arrogant he is and how he, in my view, doesn’t really fully believe in these democratic principles that he keeps bringing up. He’s been travelling the world to distract from the mess that’s at home, giving speeches in China, different climate speeches in the U.S., a 60 Minutes interview, going on MSNBC, and just having all these different media appearances and trying to make himself appear like a strong statesman who knows what he’s doing. I almost feel like this quality of not listening to people on the streets is, in his view and according to his party, something that’s to be respected. We know what the answer is. We’re the technocrats. We have the expertise, and so we’re going to push through these reforms regardless of what people think and how they feel. So there’s this disregard for the general public.
Renaud Lambert
I don’t really buy into the idea that we should have technocrats guiding us. But let’s say we did believe in this. Well, Macron’s failed in that respect as well. His government has had more problems with justice than any in the last 15 years. One of his closest aides is facing difficulties with justice because of conflicts of interest. So many of his ministers are faced with similar issues. So even that, even the idea that they know best, they’re not very sympathetic, they’re not very nice people, but they know best, let them do what they know how to do. Even that is not working anymore. They can’t play that card.
Regarding the way Macron feels about himself, yesterday, I think he got his representative in the National Assembly to pass a law whereby it is now compulsory for town halls to put up a portrait, a picture of him as president.
Talia Baroncelli
Really?
Renaud Lambert
Yeah.
Talia Baroncelli
So what happens if you throw an egg at it or graffiti? Is that then the destruction of property?
Renaud Lambert
Well, no, no, no. That’s disrespectful to the president. People have had to answer questions at police stations for putting up signs saying, ‘Macron face de cochon,’ ‘Macron is a pig face,’ or things like that.
Talia Baroncelli
Wasn’t there a woman who posted on Facebook, I believe, just showing and expressing her opposition to Macron, and I believe she was arrested, wasn’t she?
Renaud Lambert
It’s very possible. I haven’t heard that story, but it’s very possible. Now, people watching us now should know that last week a neo-Nazi organization marched in Paris, and they not only were allowed but they were accompanied by the police. There was no problem with this. Now, if they had had a banner saying ‘Macron, tête de con,’ which is a very polite insult, they would have had problems with the police. That’s where we’re at, at the moment.
I started by saying there was something joyful about the demonstration, and it’s because we do believe that this is not possible. It cannot stay like this. But it’s also quite scary. The level of police violence and the impunity they’re receiving and they’re benefiting from. The fact that neo-Nazis… and this is not an expression. This is not me saying, oh, they’re right-wing; therefore, they are neo-Nazis. No, they are neo-Nazis, and they’re marching in the streets of France.
Talia Baroncelli
The narrative has also focused so much on the “violence of the people.” Macron keeps saying that these are unacceptable acts of violence. I support protesters and respect them, but not these unacceptable acts of violence on the streets, which is to deflect from, I think, a lot of the police violence that we’ve seen; beating up protesters, some people have lost eyes, and more horrible things.
Renaud Lambert
Yep.
Talia Baroncelli
I wanted to ask you one last question, which is a bit more economical. Looking at the 2010 economic crisis, what they call the Sovereign Debt Crisis in Europe, that a lot of economists have actually explained was a banking crisis which involved German and French banks over lending to Greece. So when Greece had to be bailed out, a lot of the money that went to Greece ended up going back to paying the loans and paying the interest on those German and French bank loans. How do you think the austerity politics, which was implemented at the time to cut public expenditure, how did that play into the current moment?
Renaud Lambert
Well [pause].
Talia Baroncelli
It’s neoliberalism, and Macron is the representative of these neoliberal policies. But at the same time, I feel like there was some tension or resistance to austerity in France, and that was the debate between France and Germany.
Renaud Lambert
Yes.
Talia Baroncelli
Germany was all for austerity, whereas France was, on paper, at least, not really for austerity, and they had more debt.
Renaud Lambert
Well, it’s quite a long sequence, that sequence that leads from the subprime debt crisis to today. There were several moments, each of which certainly played some part. I think one of the big moments in France for French people, for the Left and for the Right, even the far-right, was the Greek crisis. Now, what happened during the Greek crisis and the near collapse of the Eurozone was what had been presented as the bee’s knees just didn’t work. That single currency didn’t work. It cost populations too much.
Now, in 2017, during the presidential election in France, out of, if my memory is correct, 11 candidates, I think nine of them were in favor of leaving the European Union because of the pressure that the European Union, the neoliberal pressure of the European Union is putting on France. Now, the next sequence that was, I think, that played into what we’re living at the moment was COVID. At that time, Macron said, “Whatever it takes.” That was a very important speech. So much money was poured into private companies to save them. But people have said, “Well, there is money,” in spite of what they said before. So okay, now the tap is turned, and we are going to receive some money, but it was not the case. Now they’re saying, “Well, we need to make an effort. We need to balance the books.” But listen, last year, only two years ago, you said we needed to support companies in the private sector, and there was so much money. I think people are coming on to all of this. So yes, certainly, it is playing into that sequence of events. You’re probably right.
Talia Baroncelli
Unfortunately, a lot of this disillusionment with the government is also playing into the right-wing parties.
Renaud Lambert
Yes.
Talia Baroncelli
These current reforms. So hopefully, it doesn’t lead to any more support for Marine Le Pen and her national rally party.
Renaud Lambert
No. There is something that the Left cannot avoid seeing, and even people who are not strategists for the Left. Now, this movement has lasted a couple of months in France. We’ve had, like I said, over 12 demonstrations of over 1 million people in France, with a very wide majority. Even despite that, we haven’t managed to win a struggle that is only a defensive struggle. We’re not fighting to conquer any new Right, any new disposition. We are preventing the neoliberal state from crushing us further. That shows the level of the amount of effort and the struggle we will need to put in the day we’re ready to go for a positive struggle to conquer new rights. That is daunting.
Talia Baroncelli
It is a very daunting task ahead for the French population, but also for other people throughout Europe. I think this is something which is a similar experience shared by different people in Europe and also in North America—austerity politics, cutting the budget, cutting public expenditure at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Renaud Lambert
Yep.
Talia Baroncelli
Well, Renaud Lambert, it was really great having you on the show to speak about Macron, the pension reforms, and social movements in France. I hope we can have you on again; hopefully, once there’s some positive news coming out of France.
Renaud Lambert
With pleasure.
Talia Baroncelli
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Renaud Lambert is a deputy editor and journalist for Le Monde Diplomatique, a French monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs.
