Emmanuel Macron will try to defuse the electrified social atmosphere in France today, two days after the difficult rescue of his government, by rejecting a no-confidence vote against opposition to pension reform.

The fact that the proposal was rejected by the National Assembly with a majority of only nine deputies out of 577 was described by Le Monde newspaper as a “strong slap” on Macron, while the left opposition and trade unions called for continued mobilization for not implementing the law. Having remained silent in the past, leaving the heavy burden of defending a highly unpopular law to Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne, the French president will address citizens today in an interview at 13:00 local time (14:00 Greek time) on TF1. television networks and France 2.

Sources in the presidential entourage said that Emmanuel Macron does not intend to call on the people (through a referendum or early parliamentary elections) to extinguish the popular protest or start reshuffling the government to appease it. However, he will try to “drop” the political confrontation, relying on the fatigue of the trade unions and demonstrators. The French President yesterday held successive meetings with the Prime Minister, the Presidents of the Senate and the National Assembly, as well as with the parliamentary group of his party. He has been reported to have asked his senior colleagues to prepare a clear agenda for the reforms his government will push forward in the next period, with a Paris 2024 Olympics in the horizon.

Despite help from the Born government and a pension reform that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, the mood in the government camp was heavy yesterday. “We all came out weakened. The president, the government and the parliamentary majority,” MP Gilles Legendre, who led the parliamentary group of the presidential party for two years, told the newspaper Liberation. Another Macron MP, Patrick Vinial, called on Macron to suspend the controversial pension law because of the popular anger it has provoked.

For now, the failure of the opposition to overthrow the government in the National Assembly does not appear to have acted as a deterrent to the successive waves of strikes and protests that have swept France for two months. For the fifth consecutive night in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, Rennes, Nantes and other cities, spontaneous demonstrations, blockades of roads with burning barricades and violent clashes between activists and police took place. More than 200 people were arrested in Paris alone, and there were cases of motorcycle police using violence against protesters. In Lille, protesters chanted “Louis 16th, we have beheaded him, Macron, we will get rid of you.”

Today, the President of France is giving a TV interview, and the unions are preparing for tomorrow’s new day of strikes.

Lack of fuel

Continued strikes at refineries have raised concerns among the government as previously limited fuel shortages at gas stations begin to widen. Violent clashes erupted yesterday morning between police and workers at the ExxonMobil petrochemical complex at Fosir-Mer in southern France, where the government has ordered a strike. The Marseille police department said three police officers were injured.

For tomorrow, Thursday, the country’s six largest trade union federations are calling on workers for a new day of strike, the ninth since the controversial bill was introduced, to reverse the reform. At the same time, the opposition appealed to the Constitutional Court with the aim of declaring the pension law unconstitutional and holding a referendum on this issue. However, for this, a tenth of the voters – just over 4.8 million citizens – will have to sign the petition within nine months.

Hostage release

Amidst the maze of bad events, Macron also received good news: the repatriation of French journalist Olivier Dubois after two years of being held hostage by a jihadist group in Mali, West Africa. The French president greeted him at the Villacouble air base southwest of Paris and expressed “great relief”. A freelance journalist working for Liberation newspaper and Le Point magazine, Dubois was kidnapped in April 2021 by an al-Qaeda-linked organization that routinely engages in kidnapping for ransom. It is not known how the release of the journalist became possible and whether the ransom was paid by the state. Together with Dubois, American Jeffrey Woodkie, an employee of a Christian humanitarian organization who was abducted in October 2016 in Niger, was released. With white hair and a cane, Woodkey expressed gratitude to the governments of Niger, France and the United States for a happy ending to his adventure.