Macron to lay out next phase of reforms as criticism mounts

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron will gather both houses of parliament at the opulent Versailles Palace on Monday for what has become an annual address on his plans for overhauling wide swathes of French society and institutions.

His office has given little indication of specific issues Macron will cover during his hour-long speech, though reforms of the pension system and a plan for tackling poverty are expected next year.

Lawmakers also begin debating Tuesday Macron’s call for constitutional changes aimed at streamlining the legislative process, including shrinking the number of seats in the National Assembly and the Senate by a third.

He also already pushed through corporate tax cuts and an easing of labour laws, education and housing overhauls, and a revamp of the state rail operator SNCF despite stiff union resistance.

But a growing number of critics, including some in his own centrist Republic on the Move party ( LREM), accuse the former investment banker of neglecting the concerns of voters on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

Recent comments that France spends “a crazy amount of dough” on social security programmes did little to soften his image as the “president of the rich”, as he is called by opponents.

Macron’s regal, top-down style has also raised hackles, with some MPs on the both the left and right boycotting his Versailles speech as the latest sign of a “monarchical” drift.

They cite in particular his threat to override resistance to his parliamentary overhaul by calling a referendum “if necessary”.

Hehastransformed“anoptional and rare presidential address into an annual speech to which lawmakers can only respond by their absence, without any vote,” the rightwing Republicans MP Annie Genevard said.

“Tomorrow we’re going to get a long speech on ‘ my life, my work’ that will be all about him,” Christian Jacob of the Republicans told French television Sunday.

Macron has also taken heat over the cost of bussing out hundreds of lawmakers to France’s former royal seat and deploying dozens of Republican Guards who will flank his ceremonial entry – estimated at 300,000 euros (US$350,000).

The Versailles speech could be a chance for Macron to address his critics and burnish his social justice bonafides in the face of wavering poll numbers.

An Odoxa survey published Thursday found that just 29 percent of respondents thought his policies “fair”, and while 75 percent declared him “dynamic”, only 45 percent considered him “likeable”. — AFP