The JDD. While the State finance and Social Security bills are still under discussion in Parliament, strike announcements are increasing. Are we witnessing a shift in the political center of gravity from the benches of the National Assembly to the streets?
Pierre Vermeren. The French seem resigned since the elections because they have not understood the summer sequence for which they blame President Macron. While their vote demonstrated a clear desire for change, the socio-economic situation tends to worsen. Rising taxes, upcoming restrictions, uncertainties, distressing criminal news: they are waiting for a clear perspective to be given to them, but anticipation still prevails one month before the holidays.
Can we speak of real anger in France, or is it more of a generalized feeling of exhaustion?
One does not prevent the other, just as private joy does not prevent despondency over our collective destiny. The seven Macron years revealed extreme social tensions: Yellow vests, railway workers, hospital workers, employees against 64 year olds, suburbs on fire, farmers… then the elections propelled a cold protest. However, few burning questions have been resolved, so that these angers smolder under the ashes, fueled by the inflation experienced and the announced resumption of layoffs. Yes, the anger is strong.
In your essay, La France qui déclassé, you analyze how, in the space of two generations, the Gaullian heritage was dissipated, leading to a serious crisis of confidence among the French towards their elites. Do you still see any hope of rebuilding this trust?
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The French have been hearing promises for forty years to resolve their major sovereign, economic and social problems. But these crucial questions (school, security, employment, justice, industry, agriculture, health, etc.) remain unresolved. Either governments are biased (schools, unemployment), or they trade on the future (debt, agriculture), or they minimize the problems (security, justice). There are certainly some exceptions, but there will be no more confidence without results.
“The impotence and lies of ruling elites who seem to work for their interests to the detriment of the country”
The State in crisis, the disenchantment of the working classes and the rise of populism… these phenomena are well known. Has this divide between the French and their ruling class remained unchanged since the French Revolution?
I don't think so. The Revolution of 1789 was bourgeois and liberal, before the tragedies of the Terror. But the 19th century fulfilled the promises of equal rights, and the Trente Glorieuses established the social republic. Had it not been for military and world tragedies, the French supported successive regimes and admired great men. This does not prevent irony or criticism. What is new is the impotence and lies of the ruling elites who seem to be working for their interests to the detriment of the country.
Is this a problem directly linked to the political party in power?
I don't think so. The French do not care much about parties and constitutional texts if their material and moral interests are preserved: their children, their property, their income, their protection, their education, their leisure activities… Today, they struggle to be traders, craftsmen, farmers, to buy a house or a car, they are afraid for their children, they fear being poorly cared for, and half of them have insufficient income.
Among farmers, anger is brewing again, less than a year after a movement which partially paralyzed our main roads. Is French agriculture seriously threatened without the implementation of protectionist measures?
Obviously, and basically, almost nothing has changed in two years. Europe is still waiting for the French agricultural “anomaly” to resolve itself to create an industrial agriculture that the French and their farmers do not want. To go from 390,000 operators to less than 200,000, we must let the system decline, as is currently the case despite the fine words. Without a tax moratorium or proactive support for national production in all its diversity, their death is planned. So it rumbles, because it's that or disappear silently.
Two of the major public service unions, FO and the CGT, also launched a call for mobilization and a strike. Has the civil service lost its attractiveness?
This is obvious when we look at recruitment competitions. Governments have had to boost the salaries of essential professions (security forces and tax agents). For others, it is mass management without much thought, since the massive growth of the civil service has come at the expense of quality and sovereign state services. The public service has been a social shock absorber of crisis. Now it is bending under its own weight, like the hospital or the school.
“A societal law is already scheduled for the end of January to divert minds from insoluble subjects”
Since 1947, there has not been a year without a strike at the SNCF, and railway workers often manage to assert their demands, especially on the salary level. What is the lesson to be learned from this?
The number of railway workers has been halved, and there remains a minority of statutory agents. We have therefore changed the world in the name of competition and efficiency… Me who has taken the TGV every week for twenty years, in particular the Tours-Bordeaux LGV which cost fifteen billion to go two hours between Paris and Bordeaux, the delays are increasing, which will soon bring us back to the three hours of the initial journey! The successive managements which have cut staff to transform stations into shopping malls populated by fake agents bear an immense responsibility.
The layoff plans announced by Auchan and Michelin suggest others. Can we speak of French industrial decline?
A few months ago, the government prided itself on having initiated reindustrialization. He certainly stopped the collapse and intoned an industrialist speech. But this week, the Minister of Industry said he feared 150,000 layoffs in the coming months… The disaster therefore resumes, which will aggravate the collapse of entire departments like the Meuse or the Cher, amid general indifference. Without effective mobilization, France will become a large, increasingly poor supermarket, causing human disasters and a declining birth rate. But a societal law is already scheduled for the end of January to divert minds and public debates from insoluble subjects. This is their main function.
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