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Plagued by protests, we Parisians almost envy Boris Johnson’s clarity

Who'll blink first: feminist activists dance at a Paris march against pension reforms: AFP via Getty Images
Who'll blink first: feminist activists dance at a Paris march against pension reforms: AFP via Getty Images

Plus ça change. While this week Britain only had eyes for palace intrigues, France was entering its second month of strikes. And yet, beyond the feeling of déjà vu, both states in 2020 are in fact entering uncharted territory.

The UK, with a triumphantly elected Prime Minister everyone foolishly thought a clown, will end its 47-year-long relationship with the EU, and embark on a hellish marathon of negotiations to shape its commercial future.

France, still wondering what Macronism is really all about, will face uncertain local elections and the probable surge of the extreme Right, dividing the country further, and paving the way for a Le Pen presidency in, let’s say, 2027. Perhaps, as the Italian writer Lampedusa wrote in The Leopard: “Everything must change so that everything can stay the same.”

Still, what was the French President thinking when, having just survived months of the violent and anarchic “gilets jaunes” protests, he thought no better than to launch the mother of all French reforms — the shaking up of the whole pension system? A reform every French president before him eventually gave up on, after hitting the brick wall of French discontent. Besides, there was no real urgency. He could have gently tweaked it the way previous governments did in order to close the deficit gap by 2025. But the French President is not for tweaking.

Emmanuel Macron is in fact exactly like his compatriots — a revolutionary at heart. French rail workers on strike won’t budge? Well, neither will their President. And let’s see who blinks first. The communist-led trade unionists like depicting Macron as an oblivious Louis XVI (who was guillotined during the revolution). How wrong they are.

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron during the PM’s visit to Paris in August (Getty Images)
Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron during the PM’s visit to Paris in August (Getty Images)

Macron is a young Bonaparte. He wants to change the way the French think, no less, and help them apprehend life in the 21st century. Good luck with that. He says he wants to make the pension system simpler and fairer. An admirable thought but no easy task.

With its 42 special pension schemes, the system currently allows, among other curiosities, for railway workers to retire at 50 and dancers at 42 with a full pension, paid for by the rest of the French workforce. Representing 14 per cent of the GDP, in other words twice the OECD average, the French pension system is generous to some but much less so to others such as the self-employed, many of whom are women, and farmers who don’t benefit from special regimes.

The reform, which would merge the 42 regimes into a unique points-based system with the same rule for all, would benefit the latter to the detriment of the former. The former, although representing a very small minority of the workforce, have the ability to disrupt and paralyse France.

Transport strikes, for instance, involve 0.1 per cent of the French workforce and yet their ability to disrupt the country is extremely high. Just go to Paris, you’ll see how uncivil we have all become. Parisians, who are worst- affected by transport strikes, have now reached a hitherto unseen road-rage anxiety level from dawn to dusk. Accidents between mopeds, bikes, cars and pedestrians have risen by 40 per cent since the beginning of the strike.

France being France, the irony is that although a majority of the French people support this reform, they also support the protesters. We are staring into the eye of yet another French contradiction. So how will this end?

The reform will pass. Heavily amended. After the past months of classic French theatre, during which protesters flexed their muscles and the government played hard to get, France’s biggest trade union, the reformist and moderate CFDT, last week received the guarantees it wanted. The government withdrew a move to raise the full-benefit retirement age to 64 from the present 62 and agreed to maintain certain advantages for prison wardens, firefighters, policemen, teachers, pilots, even dancers, and the union nodded — in satisfaction.

The end is now in sight even if the communist trade union CGT doesn’t budge (it never does). However, there will be no winner. Extreme Right and extreme Left, the only opposition left in France, will hate the President even more and Macron will still be looking for an electoral base he has been unable to build since his election.

The French strikes should peter out soon after Boris Johnson bongs for Brexit. How will the Continent then view Britain? It’s difficult to say, but at least the withdrawal agreement saga has ended. And that’s a relief. Boris Johnson was elected with an impressive majority on a clear mandate, Get Brexit Done, and this has given a sense of closure not only to the British but also to Europeans who somehow suffered, even at a distance, from the anxieties of the past three years.

There’s no turning back, at least not for at least a generation, so let’s get this done indeed. It might take a while before the UK again finds a place in the hearts of young Europeans who look to Berlin or Barcelona as more attractive cities to study and live in, but if Brexit is done by the end of this year, as Boris Johnson has promised, who knows, London may swing back quicker than we think while Paris is still being plagued by protests of all kinds.