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Barely Hanging On: Macron Narrowly Survives Confidence Vote Despite Ongoing Protests

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The government of French President Emmanuel Macron has narrowly survived two confidence motions in the French parliament after forcing through highly controversial retirement reforms.

The French parliament saw two confidence motions on Monday, with one failing to pass by just nine votes after the government of President Emmanuel Macron forced through pension reforms that raised the retirement age.

The first confidence motion was tabled by the centrist group Liot and managed to clear 278 votes, but fell just short of the 287 votes needed to pass the vote and bring down the government which has a minority in the French parliament, France24 reports. The margin of failure was reportedly much slimmer than anticipated, so while Macron survived this time it may be the case the vote signals to dissident MPs that the government is actually less strong than first thought.

A second confidence motion was also proposed by populist Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) but did not attract as much support as the first and also fell short of the 287 votes needed.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne spoke prior to the votes on the confidence motions and attempted to defend the government’s position on invoking Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which allows the government to force through legislation despite not having a majority of votes in parliament for it. Prime Minister Borne was met with jeers as she spoke in the chamber.

The pension reform, which raises the French retirement age from 62 to 64, is now largely seen as being passed into law following the failures of the confidence motions, but both the populist-right National Rally and the far-left NUPES group will look to take the matter to the Constitutional Council.

“We are coming to the end of the democratic process of this essential reform for our country. It is with humility and seriousness that I assumed my responsibility and that of my Government. For our pay-as-you-go pension system. For our social model,” Prime Minister Borne said following the votes.

Monday’s votes also come after days of protesting and rioting in the wake of the pension reforms as well as workers’ strikes.

Last week saw hundreds of people arrested in Paris on Thursday when President Macron’s government announced it would be using Article 49.3 to force through the pension reform as rioters set fires and clashed with police.

Protests and riots continued over the weekend, with 81 people arrested in Paris on Saturday night despite the government ordering a ban on protests in the French capital.

Striking garbage workers in Paris have also impacted the city, as an estimated 10,000 tonnes of garbage piling up on the city’s streets. Animal toxicologist and specialist in rats and invasive species Romain Lasseur warned the city could face a rat invasion as a result of the garbage.

“They will walk in the garbage cans, reproduce there, and leave their urine and droppings. There is a worrying health risk, for garbage collectors and the population in general, especially with leptospirosis,” Lasseur said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

Expect Riots: Macron Govt Uses Constitutional Loophole to Avoid Vote and Pass Retirement Age Rise

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The government of French President Emmanuel Macron was thrown into chaos on Thursday after it used a controversial constitutional loophole to pass his widely contested bill to raise the retirement age after it was doubtful that the legislation would secure a majority vote in the National Assembly.

Thousands of people immediately took to the streets and leftist leaders and union chiefs have already called for mass demonstrations over the weekend after French Prime Minster Elisabeth Borne took to the floor of the National Assembly — amid shouts of “resign” from opposition MPs — to invoke article 49.3 of the constitution, a mechanism often described as the “nuclear option” in French legislative politics, as it allows the government to pass bills without the need for a majority vote.

Justifying the decision to invoke the article, President said the “financial and economic risks are too great” of not raising the pension age from 62 to 64-years-old, with the government arguing that the programme faces insolvency otherwise.

“We were at the end of the exercise. We have too much uncertainty. We will not take the risk of putting ourselves back in the hands of our political opponents who had nevertheless committed to reform,” a government spokesman told the Le Parisian newspaper.

However, the deployment of article 49.3 does not mean that the Macron government is out of the woods yet, with populist right-wing National Rally (RN) in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen vowing to launch a measure of no confidence on Friday, which if successful, would likely see Prime Minister Borne forced to resign and possibly the dissolving of parliament by Macron.

“The use of 49.3 for the 11th time and on a text so fundamental and massively rejected by the French, betrays the headlong rush of an executive who no longer hears and no longer listens to the people,” Le Pen said.

Should the motion fail, opposition parties in the NA could still launch an appeal to the constitutional council to request a referendum vote among the public to overturn the legislation.

Joining spontaneous protests on the streets of Paris after the news broke, leftist leader of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES) group in the National Assembly, Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that the pension reforms have “no parliamentary legitimacy”.

Suggesting that this could see the end of President Macron’s reign, Mélenchon added: “On the basis of this spectacular failure, we could not see that there is no presidential majority. The presidential minority collapsed before your eyes.”

Even some from within Macron’s Renaissance political party have expressed outrage over the move, with MP Eric Bothorel saying that he is wavering “between disappointment and anger”.

“We should have put it to a vote,” Bothorel said. “We owed that to the opposition, to those who demonstrated their disagreement always in a calm and dignified manner. Defeat or victory, democracy would have spoken.”

The political turmoil comes less than one year after Mr Macron secured a second term as president, which while he won by a comfortable margin, saw Le Pen surge to 41.5 per cent of the vote, with younger millennials and working-class voters turning their backs on the globalist agenda of Macron, who campaigned on the promise of reforming the pension system in order to keep the European nation’s large welfare state afloat.

Less than two months later, Macron was stripped of his governing majority in the parliament after securing just 245 seats in the National Assembly elections, forcing him to form a coalition with the centre-right Les Republicains to maintain the required 289 vote majority.

The attempts to raise the pension age have seen millions pour out onto the streets in trade union-organised protests and strikes across the nation, which have seen seen violent rioting in cities such as Paris and Marseille, as well as activists launching blockades of ports and energy refineries in an attempt to force the government’s hand. Strikes have also seen the streets of Paris strewn with tonnes of garbage as municipal workers walked off the job.

Unions have already announced that they intend on launching more ‘mobilisations’ in response to the invocation of article 49.3, with two protest days likely to be planned for next week.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka