Pension bill’s foes move to unseat Macron

Opposition parties filed two no-confidence motions against French President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Friday after his decision to push a widely unpopular pension bill through Parliament without a full vote, escalating a showdown with protesters and labor unions, who have vowed more strikes.

Macron’s decision, announced by his prime minister on Thursday during a raucous session in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, infuriated opponents of the bill, which would push back the legal age of retirement to 64, from 62. Overnight, violent demonstrations broke out in several French cities and protesters returned to the streets on Friday.

“It’s a Pyrrhic victory, one that continues to cause harm and that is accelerating a crisis instead of ending it,” Danièle Obono, a legislator for the leftist France Unbowed party, said of Macron’s move. “This is a social crisis that has become a democratic crisis.”

Under the rules of the French Constitution, the pension bill will become law unless a no-confidence motion against the government succeeds in the National Assembly. On Friday afternoon, several opposition groups said that they had agreed to back a broad no-confidence motion put forward by a small group of independent lawmakers.

The fragmentation of Macron’s opposition in Parliament has often prevented it from uniting behind a single motion in the past, but the one filed by the independent lawmakers had a good chance of attracting more support than usual.

“This is about being useful to our country by voting against this unfair and ineffective pension reform,” said Bertrand Pancher, the head lawmaker in the independent group.

The far-right National Rally party filed its own motion on Friday, too, though it has also said that its lawmakers would vote for motions filed by others. A vote on both no-confidence motions is expected in the coming days, most likely on Monday.

But neither motion was seen as very likely to succeed. Only a single no-confidence motion has succeeded in France since 1958, when the current Constitution was adopted.

The mainstream conservative Republican party, while divided over support for the pension bill, has portrayed itself as the party of stability and order, and is very reluctant to topple Macron’s Cabinet. Their support is critical to passage of any no-confidence motion.

“We will never add chaos to chaos,” Éric Ciotti, the head of the Republicans, said Thursday.