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Violence risks ‘uncivilising’ France, warns Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Wednesday that France faces an "uncivilising process", a government source said, following the violent deaths of a nurse and three policemen and repeated attacks on elected officials.

Published: 25 May 2023 08:35 CEST

Violence risks 'uncivilising' France, warns Macron

French president Emmanuel Macron prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris on May 24th. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

“We must be uncompromising on the fundamentals. There is no legitimate violence, whether verbal or against people,” Macron told ministers at a cabinet meeting.

“We have to work from top to bottom to counteract this uncivilising process,” he added, in comments first reported by daily Le Parisien and confirmed to AFP by a person present in the meeting room.

Macron was “calling society to order,” a person close to the president told Le Parisien anonymously, adding that “politicians aren’t the only ones responsible” for reducing violence.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday participated in a minute’s silence for a nurse slain Monday in the eastern city of Reims, in a knife attack by a man suffering from psychiatric problems.

READ MORE: OPINION: Macron has made a start, but France’s ‘reindustrialisation’ must move faster

Macron was to travel on Thursday to Roubaix in northern France, to pay respects to three policemen killed in a Sunday car crash with a man under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

This week’s violence follows assaults on elected officials, including a mayor in western France who stepped down after an arson attack on his house.

Opponents of an accommodation centre for asylum seekers in the town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins are believed to have set the fire.

Other officials including MPs have had their constituency offices vandalised for political motives amid seen fierce protests over Macron’s unpopular pension reform.

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French left in last-ditch bid to derail pensions overhaul

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets across France for what will be the fourteenth day of demonstrations since January to oppose the reform.

Macron signed in April the bill to raise the pension age to 64 from 62 after the government used a controversial but legal mechanism to avoid a vote in parliament that it risked losing.

The later retirement age, which seeks to bolster France’s troubled long-term finances, was a banner pledge of Macron’s second and final term in office, and its smooth implementation is seen by supporters as crucial to his legacy.

Parts of the overhaul, including the key increase in the pension age, were printed on Sunday in France’s official journal, meaning they are now law.

READ MORE: Protests and flight cancellations: What to expect from Tuesday’s French pension strike

Opponents are pinning their hopes on a motion put forward by the small Liot faction in parliament — broadly backed by the left — to repeal the law and the increased retirement age.

Parliament speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, a member of Macron’s party but officially neutral, was to rule on Thursday whether parliament could vote on returning the retirement age to 62.

This was removed from the Liot motion at commission level, but left-wing parties have sought to put it back on the agenda via an amendment.

‘Increase in anger and violence’

In an op-ed for the Le Monde daily on Monday, the key figures from all of France’s left-wing parties urged Braun-Pivet to allow a vote on the motion, at the risk of further unrest.

“For our fellow citizens, a new denial of democracy will only lead to increased disaffection for our institutions, which is already manifesting itself in the form of growing abstentionism, and even an increase in anger and violence,” they said.

Authorities expect up to 600,000 people at the demonstrations nationwide on Tuesday, less than half the peak on March 7th, when 1.28 million were counted by police.

In contrast to the earlier phase of the movement, only limited disruption is expected on public transport though some flight cancellations are awaited, in particular at the Paris Orly airport.

READ MORE: Which French airports will be hit by cancellations during Tuesday’s strike?

“The defeat has not been enacted,” Greens MP Sandrine Rousseau told Radio J, warning that “we will raise our voices” if the parliament vote is not allowed.

The battle against the pensions reform “will never finish”, hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon told the 20 Minutes daily.

But Macron’s allies say it has long been game over for opponents of the reform, even if it remains widely unpopular with the public.

The opposition “knows very well that this motion has no future,” Prisca Thevenot, an MP for Macron’s Renaissance party, told LCI television on Sunday.

The government says the changes are essential for France’s financial health.

In April, Fitch, one of the leading credit ratings agencies, lowered its rating on France’s debt, which is approaching €3 trillion.

But France managed to avoid a new credit downgrade on Friday, when S&P Global maintained the agency’s “AA” rating.

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