Paris.
In France, thousands are protesting against a pension reform. President Macron should still enforce it, believes Peter Heusch.
French President Emmanuel Macron knows full well that his pension reform is as controversial as any that his predecessors have dared to tackle. When it comes to their retirement, which everyone agrees can’t come soon enough, the French are on principle rebellious. And, of course, Macron also knew that both the opposition and the unions would see pushing through the reform by decree as a downright provocation.
Of course, this 45-year-old president has rarely lacked courage or a willingness to take risks. Just as little as the will, the notoriously recalcitrant Gauls willingness to reform to transform France, which in many ways is actually a bit old-fashioned, into a start-up nation. With this aspiration, he took office in 2017 and, almost miraculously, was re-elected last year.
France: Macron’s future depends on the pension reform
Since then, Macron has succeeded in making a number of The structural reform to be carried out in his country, which is considered irreconcilable. Most were overdue. This also applies, or even more so, to the pension reform. In no EU member state is life expectancy higher and the retirement age lower than in France. In addition, our neighbors draw the highest average pension in the EU and Paris already has to mobilize 14 percent of the gross national product to finance the old-age security system.
Even the French are at least subliminally aware that things cannot go on like this. The pension fund threaten in the coming years billion deficits. But that alone does not explain Macron’s iron determination. If the pension reform, which he sees as the mother of all reforms, fails, it would not only call his entire modernization program into question. He also threatens – at home as with his European partners – to be seen as an ex-leader at an early stage.
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