There is a date that the presidential majority would like to see pass as quickly as possible or even would not like to live it at all. It’s June 8. Date on which the Liot parliamentary group, led by the conservative deputy, Charles De Courson, should present its bill to repeal the one which had allowed Emmanuel Macron to have the very questionable pension reform adopted.
Even if this new offensive by the opposition has little chance of succeeding, knowing that it will not be able to pass the barrier of the senate where the opposition does not have a majority, a political game of great importance will be played out in parliament. sensitivity. With possibly harmful consequences on both the image and the governance of Emmanuel Macron.
This explains why the government, through the president of parliament Yaël Braun-Pivet who belongs to the presidential majority, is trying by all means to block this process by appealing to article 40 of the constitution which prevents the debate and the vote of any law which would cause additional expenses for the State budget.
Today, a new showdown is looming between Macron and the opposition on the still burning issue of pension reform. After having resisted pressure from the street by ignoring the monster demonstrations organized by the unions, after having triumphed over national representation by organizing a forced passage through the use of the famous 49.3, Emmanuel Macron finds himself managing another sequence no less politically sensitive who could decide the mood of an entire country.
If he allows this parliamentary debate on June 8 to take place and be sanctioned by a vote, there is a good chance that it will be won by the opposition. Emmanuel Macron will find himself openly at odds with a French opinion fiercely hostile to his reforms.
And if he manages, through institutional micmacs, to hamper this debate and prevent it, he would embody, by consecrating it, in the eyes of the French and their political class, the image of a man who deprives the French of their democratic expression. Which is in the current context, marked by political effervescence and a rise in extremes, a very bad signal.
It is obvious that the parliamentary opposition, on the left as well as on the right, would like to hold on to the holding of this debate and this vote on June 8. This is an opportunity for her to make up for the democratic deprivations she suffered through the multiple uses of 49.3. She would also dream of dismantling the entire architecture put in place by Emmanuel Macron with an obvious electoral calculation.
It must be said that the fight for the 2027 presidential election began on the first day of Emmanuel Macron’s second term. The latter, by the constitution, cannot claim a third term. The succession race has already begun. Between an extreme right certain to be at the gates of power, a left in search of real unity and a right, in search of a leader to embody its hopes. Each of the forces present has a strategic interest in weakening the governance of Emmanuel Macron to then position themselves as his real alternative.
The meeting of June 8 therefore takes on a capital importance in the writing of the four years that remain of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate. Could he assume politically to have had recourse to 49.3 to push through his reforms and at the same time to resort to article 40 to gag the opposition and prevent it from discussing and voting? It is a delicate political choice that is offered to Emmanuel Macron. Allowing the vote is tantamount to running the risk of a spectacular defeat of his troops in parliament and a loud disavowal before the French. Prohibiting the vote installs Macron in the stature of the man who prevents, even blocks, democratic expression.
In both cases, this situation will give grain to grind to the multiple oppositions launched like a high-speed train with the aim of taking the Elysée, crushing in the process any candidacy that could come out of the ranks of the presidential majority. Names are already circulating and are tested in the radars of polling institutions such as former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, the current Minister of Finance, Bruno Lemaire, or the current Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin.