France exorcises Coronavirus, but there is another virus in French politics

The Louvre reopens after just two days of closure due not to a health authority measure, but to the application of an article of the Code du Travail which authorizes employees to abstain from work when dangerous conditions are discovered in the company (the circulation of Coronavirus), in short, for union reasons they returned as soon as the management had installed disinfectant gel dispensers and organized the flow of visitors differently so as to avoid gatherings in theaters.

Also in the Louvre, in the courtyard that houses the famous glass pyramid, Louis Vuitton was able to conclude the Fashion Week, albeit shortened by one day, by parading the models in front of an authentic “human wall” wanted by the artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière (in Italy he worked for Trussardi) with two hundred figures, side by side, dressed in clothes from the fifteenth century to the fifties of the last century.

In the meantime, the Book Fair has been postponed until June while a government decree, just approved, forbids gatherings with more than 5 thousand people, perhaps a way to avert the resumption of strikes against the pension reform (just approved with a coup force to the National Assembly as will be said later) so much so that the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné he can be ironic by publishing a cartoon in which an Edouard Philippe is seen urging the approval of the provision and the ministers who ask if the number of 5 thousand should be referred to the calculations of the Prefecture or to those of the trade unions (which is the eternal accounting diatribe of each event trade union).

And so we come to the point: in France which has a few hundred infected (less than a tenth of the Italian ones) and three “foyers”, three red areas (two in the north, Oise and Morbihan and one in the south, Haute-Savoie), which requires the production of masks to make them available above all to healthcare personnel; in this France which every evening sends the secretary general of the ministry of health (Jérôme Salomon) to all television networks and not the minister (Olivier Veran, who is also a doctor at the hospital in Grenoble) to do the daily accounting of the infection, which what’s scariest?

Coronavirus or the application of the social security reform which, in the end, will force you to work for up to 64-65 years or will cut (and not a little if you want to maintain the financial balance of the system which today weighs 329 billion, 14 points of pil) the amount of the pension checks?

To read Le Figaro, is the second, the pension reform, to disturb more. Because, as he writes in a front page editorial with the significant title “And if we talked about serious things”, after two years of consultation with the social partners, in the end the government was forced to resort to 49.3 to make it go into first reading in Parliament unleashing protests from the opposition and unions that have already proclaimed a strike for next March 31 (ten days after the administrative elections and this is also significant: as if you wanted to give another blow to Macron’s party which, of course, does not will have shone in local consultations and perhaps even in Paris after the Griveaux scandal, the candidate discovered to send sextape by mobile).

But before continuing, an explanation is essential. 49.3 (where 3 indicates the third paragraph) is that article of the French Constitution of 1958 that authorizes the government to block the obstructionism of the oppositions (in this case, 41,888 amendments) freezing the debate and giving for approval at first reading a disputed bill. It must be said that 49.3, which is not the “kangaroo clause” as it has been improperly defined by the Italian media, has never had a good reception either in politics (the opposition, right or left, has always defined it “une déni de démocratie“) Or in doctrine (constitutionalists have always considered it an extreme means, to be used with caution).

But this is not the point. The seriousness of the application of 49.3, net of the inevitable and reciprocal accusations of arrogance, lies in the fact that the choice of the government, in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis (or perhaps precisely for this reason, as the most critical say) represents a further fracture in the project Macronian politician.

A project that foresaw, in the 2017 election program, the reform of the pension system but envisaged to do so through the involvement of all interested parties, social partners and union representatives. In these two years, in fact, a certain liaison had been built with the reformist unions – starting with Laurent Berger’s powerful Cfdt (the French CISL) – in favor of the reform, but in the end, as he wrote Le Monde, the government acted like Gribouille (character of popular literature, what we are the village idiot) and he blew everything up proving unable to build an alliance with the reformist union, stubbornly (especially Philippe) on the so-called “age pivot“(Which will actually extend the retirement age from 62 to 64-65), saving some special regimes, extending the calendar of entry into force of the reform and, ultimately, blocking any compromise on the issue of financial equilibrium. In short, a “Petaudiere “ a mess as he wrote Le Figaro.

All of this made the French enrage (who have made 11 general strikes since 5 December 2019), made what was to be “the mother of all reforms” incomprehensible, given breath to populism (already widely fed by the Yellow Vests) and, to the end, forced macronism to clash with oppositions (all political and social) just on the eve of the administrative next March 15.

Infectious disease and politics go hand in hand. In France that tries to exorcise the Coronavirus by reading Camus’s “La Peste” (sales have grown by 40% in recent days), which does not close schools (only 120 institutes in the red areas), cinemas, stadiums and theaters, which tries to live normally (yesterday an infected but not serious patient was sent home on the subway but “with gloves and a mask” let the Bichat hospital in Paris know where he was hospitalized); in this France it is as if a populist Coronavirus had attacked the very foundations of macronism (and parliamentary democracy).

“Is it serious?” asks a patient, in the cartoon of Plantu on the first page of Le Monde, to the doctor who measured his blood pressure, look a bit, at the level of 49.3. As if to say that in French politics there are viruses that can do more harm than Coronavirus.