 Good afternoon everybody, my name is Barry Colfer and I'm the Director of Research here at the Institute of International European Affairs in Dublin. You're most welcome and we're delighted to be joined today by Dr Emmanuel Sean Quinlivan, Lecturer in European Politics at UCC. And Dr Sean Quinlivan is going to speak to us about France's 2023 in review and what to expect in 2024. This is our last webinar of many webinars of 2023 so I want to thank all of our speakers and all of our participants for the great ideas that have been shared and the great discussions we've had. Dr Sean Quinlivan will speak for the customary 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to the Q&A with you, our audience. As ever you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom. We'll get to as many of them as we can. And as ever please be minded that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion as well at the artist formerly known as Twitter using the handle at IEA. I'll now formally introduce Dr Sean Quinlivan and hand it over to her. Dr Emmanuel Sean Quinlivan is a lecturer in European politics in the Department of Government at University College Core UCC. She was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair in Active European Citizenship in 2021 and a Jean Monnet Teacher Training Grant, one of only 20 that were delivered Europe-wide in 2022. She teaches European policymaking and institutional politics as well as French politics. And she's the director of UCC's Hub in Active European Citizenship. Manuel thanks as ever for being with us and the floor is yours. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. So thank you for the invitation. So let me just share my screen. I have a PowerPoint for the presentation today. There we are. So I'm actually particularly pleased to be invited this week because, as you know, there's been a lot of drama in France in the last few days. So I wanted to give you an overview of what Macron's second mandate has been like so far. It's only been 18 months and it feels like five years already. And as Barry said, maybe suggest a few things that will happen for the rest of the mandate. Now, let me see. I move on. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to look at things politically, socially and economically or economically and socially. So politically, I'm going to bring you back to June 2022 just to remind ourselves that Emmanuel Macron was elected in April. But by June he only achieved a relative majority in the legislative elections. So he got 246 seats out of 577. The magic number is 289 to have an overall majority. So he was short 43 seats. Since then it's become 45 seats because some have moved. And he honestly, I think, didn't expect it at all. He was in this mold of thinking, I won the presidential elections. You know, the legislative elections are just two months later. There's no way I'm not going to get an overall majority. So that was a shock to his system and I think to the people around him. I remember very well that Roland Caroll, who is a very esteemed political scientist who teaches in Sciences Po, at the time was invited a lot in different TV programs to explain what that meant and how, you know, what would happen. And he clearly explained that you had so many European countries that could function with coalitions or even, you know, minority governments and they struck compromises and all this could happen in France. There was no reason why France was unable to achieve this. Well, clearly after 18 months of the born government, the clear conclusion is it's it's not in the French political culture. And the example of the immigration bill is that that just happened a few days ago is is very clear is a testimony to this. It's actually surprising that it didn't happen before. But that's because the government has used an article in the French Constitution, which is article 49.3, which allows the government for specific bills to avoid a debate in the parliament and put the bill to a vote engaging it or committing it's confidence basically. So if you vote, if the parties vote no to to this bill, then the government falls. So the article 49.3 has been used 20 times as you can see in the diagram on the right there. Elizabeth born until this month has used it 20 times has faced 27 motions of no confidence of censure that were all defeated. And she is only 18 months into the mandate, Michelle Rokar here over three years faced 28 motions of no confidence. Sorry, 28. Sorry, he used the 49.3 article 28 times, but faced only five motions of no confidence. I want to say a few words just on the dynamic of oppositions in the National Assembly. It's divided into three different types of oppositions. So you have new pests, which includes the socialist the Greens and La France insoumise. And then you have LL who are the Conservatives and the Rassemblement National who are the former Front National. And I've categorized them as radical. So new pairs has been radical, extremely vocal. I would say offensive in the way they have approached their political exchanges and political work. LR is in an existential position. So I'll come back to this because Emmanuel Macron really thought that and a lot of his political heavyweights thought that they could count on LR. But as we saw with the immigration bill, that didn't work out and LR is in a position and which was indicated very early on by their leader, Olivier Marlet, that they weren't going to be the crotch for Emmanuel Macron because that would be the end of them. And then Rassemblement National, you might be surprised that I categorized them as professional. They have acted in a more professional way than they've ever acted before. They're the largest group of Rassemblement National MPs we've ever had. And compared with LFE and PS and Greens, but particularly LFE, the larger composition of the larger member of New Pes. They have been relatively professional and restrained and they have worked on their files and they have worked the system particularly to get certain positions in the National Assembly. So they've certainly professionalized all this with the perspective of 2027. So what's on the agenda until 2027 we have, and this is what Emmanuel Macron has pointed towards, enthroning the right to abortion in the Constitution that came very much into the discussion after the Roe v Wade overturn in the US. But it's still in discussion and on the agenda. The extension of the scope in the use of the referendum, it's very limited compared with what you have in Ireland. So it's in the 1958 original Constitution we had the use of referendum for the structuring of public institutions and the ratification of international treaties. Then in 1995, Chirac extended it to economic and social policy and then in 2008, Sarkozy extended it to environmental issues. The problem with amendments to the Constitution is that Emmanuel Macron needs a certain number of, you know, a certain level of majorities and etc. He wouldn't have three-fifths of the two institutions, Senate and National Assembly, so the parliament. So it would be quite a high hurdle to strike. When you look at the immigration legislation, it is still on the agenda. It has now moved towards the Commission Mix Paris, which includes seven MPs and seven senators, because it was defeated before even being debated. That was a huge defeat for the Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, who is a political heavyweight. Macron's government has often been criticized for being low in political heavyweights and rather heavy on civil society or technicians as such. But people who don't have a political know-how, Gérald Darmanin certainly have a political know-how. But he didn't manage to convince his LR, where he comes from actually, the party he comes from, his LR colleagues to support the legislation. All that because what came out of the Senate that had been amended by the LR group there that has the majority was undone largely by the National Assembly. And Gérald Darmanin didn't like said that both versions were very good and etc. So it was very confusing. But this is a legislation that will remain on the agenda and it cannot go to the 49.3 article because it is covering too many areas and justice and civil matters and etc. So it doesn't fit into the areas I've just outlined. Gabriel Atal, who is the new Minister for Education, has started, kickstarted a reform of education in France. And on the right there, I've put a table from the recent PISA analysis. And I know PISA is criticized, but nonetheless it's kind of the reference for when it comes to education. And you can see that quite consistently the level of 15 year old students in France when it comes to mathematics, reading and science is declining. And that has been the subject of discussion for a long time actually. And Gabriel Atal is now kind of trying to tackle this. So it's his main focus, Gabriel Atal is seen as the shining star of the Macronie, as they say, the potential successor to Emmanuel Macron. He has done very well in his previous positions and he was picked as a very young Minister for Education and a lot is expected of him actually. So something to follow because this will be important as well. And it's linked to what I'm going to say at the social level. And finally, the end of life legislation will be presented in February 2024. It follows a kind of French version of the Citizens Assembly. It divides the government, but also LR is against what the Citizens Assembly has recommended. So we'll have to see what the government comes up with. But this is a key social legislation that will certainly come before the national representation. Now, our options in terms of the political kind of crisis that France is facing with the rejection of the debate on the immigration legislation. There are different options. We can do nothing, but I don't think that's what Emmanuel Macron has in mind. We have discussed a lot dissolving the National Assembly. He's rejected this option. There's a potential of a large reshuffle of the government, including a change of Prime Minister. His issue there is who would be the potential candidates? And then a small reshuffle of the government with no change of Prime Minister. That has already happened. It could happen again. Gérald Darmanin has offered his resignation, which was rejected by Emmanuel Macron. But that could still be an option. A proper coalition government with LR, which is what LR wants. It doesn't want to just prop up the government. It wants to be allied in a coalition with the government and get posts, but also items of their program onto the agenda. And then the one that has also been mentioned by some, so you know how governments put out little feelers like this the same way there was a suggestion that Macron wanted to change the constitution in order to circumvent the restriction to two mandates that was put out by his... I can't remember the name of his very faithful friend, but it got a bad reaction, so that was withdrawn from the discussion. But Macron could resign and run again in 2027 potentially. I don't think that's the way it's going. We're going either for a reshuffle large or small. Now, from a social point of view, France is very much at a point of eruption. We have seen a constant increase in attacks against upholders of authority like policemen, gendarmes, doctors, teachers, and not only people who represent the state, but as I said, doctors, teachers, firefighters have been attacked, you know, sorry, attacks on firefighters have increased from 899 in 2008 to 3400 in 2018, which shows it's one example only of the increase in attacks on people of authority. We've had a murder of a teacher in the school in Arras in October 2023. Sorry, and that was three years after the beheading of Samuel Pati outside his school. We've had the murder of a Spanish teacher in April 23 as well, both for different reasons, but it's just this level of violence that is increasing in society. And that has led to a discussion started by Jérôme Forquet, who's a really interesting political scientist and analyst. And he's talked about a process of de-civilization. So he's taken Norbert Elias' description of a process of civilisation, which led to the appeasement of social norms, where violence wasn't the recourse to solve issues, but people, you know, there was an increase in civility and being courteous. He also highlighted the significance of language in the process of civilisation. And in contrast, Jérôme Forquet has highlighted how we have, well, he thinks we've entered a process of de-civilisation where we've moved from the pre-1960s France to a child-centric France where education has changed quite significantly to now a very customer-centric France where there is a decreasing level of acceptance of obstacles to our desires. If you look at the graph on the right, he's put together this graph like he works for EFOP and the psychological consequences to consumption or non-consumption. Like, the older you are, the more likely you are to be just resigned like you don't have the means to buy the iPhone 15Z or whatever it is. But that's fine because you have the iPhone 11 and you're happy with that. And the younger you are, the more you feel this is your entitlement and if you don't get that, you are frustrated, not just resigned. So, Jérôme Forquet insists on child-centricity, the increase in consumerism in French society, the end to the inference of the church, which even post-1960s, like in the 70s were around 35%, and the end to civic education in school, which is also a significant topic of discussion regarding change in curriculum in France to bring back lessons on morality and civic action and etc. I wanted to take this example because I know it is something that has been discussed in Ireland, the impact on local representatives, the level of violence, because at the end of the day, you know, it's our political representatives, democratically elected representatives on the ground that are the first port of call when it comes to this level of violence. So on the left, you have Yannick Morez, who's the mayor of Saint-Brévin, whose house and cars were burnt down after the state decided to move a refugee centre from another locality to his town and to set it up next to a school. That was on the 22nd of March this year, on the 1st of July, the mayor, Nael, who was a young man, was killed by policemen during a check-up, a road check-up. The Vincent-Jean-Brain, who is the mayor of L'Élérose, not at all where Nael was killed, but Nael's death led to riots all across France. Vincent-Jean-Brain wasn't actually in his house, but his house and his car were set up on fire, and his wife and two kids escaped just at the last minute from there. His wife was injured. And this highlights, you know, what Seville Poff has showed that 39% of mayors have received verbal or written threats, which is an increase of 11% on 2020. That was in 2022. In 2022, you had 37% of mayors that had received insults or abuse, an increase of 8% and 63% were victims of antisocial behaviour from rudeness to physical abuse. So, again, our local representatives are those that are the most affected and are the first to be affected. From an economic point of view, I've only known France with mass unemployment. Since the 1970s, France has known mass unemployment where other European countries had their ups and downs, but they were able to kind of find solutions to unemployment. France never did. Until very recently, and under Macron, not only because of Macron, it started under Hollande and etc., but we went from 3 million unemployed in 2015 to 2.2 million in 2022, so we went from 9% to 7% of unemployment, and now Macron is aiming for 5% of unemployment, which would be full employment levels. And you would think, well, because for years, the main issue that voters had was the level of unemployment, that there would be some satisfaction with the economic results that Macron has achieved or were achieved under Macron's government, but we're not there at all. The people still feel because of inflation, like every country that their quality of life has declined. At a macro level, there's a main economic issue, which is the level of public expenditure and public debt. So public debt, if you look at the map on the right, you see that France is among the most publicly indebted countries with 111% of GDP compared with an average of 90% in the EU, and Ireland is at 43%. So there's an issue about this public debt and how it's going to be repaid, particularly with the increase in interest rates in the ECB, or by the ECB, but overall there's this feeling that French growth, economic growth and French economic performances are stagnating now, and that certainly the aim of full employment is in the rear view mirror now. The level of public expenditure, well I think the graph says it all quite honestly, France is right at the top and Ireland is right at the bottom. So the problem that French people have consistently highlighted through COVID, but even before COVID, is that we have a high level of public expenditure financed by a high level of taxation for public services that are declining in quality. So education, PISA studies year after year, time after time, show that French students perform less and less well. Our health system is beyond creaking at the seams. We had doctors and nurses in the streets repeatedly. The conditions of hospitals is just appalling, of a lot of them is just appalling. They're very much struggling. Public transportation you will have in regions, people complaining about the punctuality of trains, the quality of trains, etc. Police, you have police stations that are getting closed down and etc. to try and save up money, but people are unhappy about this. So I wanted to mention a study that is a little bit old, but Christophe Guilly in La France-Périférique highlighted how there's a link between the closing of rural public services like post offices or police stations. And an increase in the vote for the Rassemblement National. So the further away you are from a post office, a police station or a regional train station, the more likely, removed from state public services, the more likely you vote for the Rassemblement National. I'm going to finish up with an international look at Merkel's achievements. I'll start with the Spiegel. So France was, I mean, France, I don't know, on Twitter and France elites were really delighted with this Spiegel article, which was about France, but it was a better, sorry, France was Germany, but better. So it was trying to do the same as Germany, but better, because for years, France was regarded as kind of below Germany, and this journalist highlighted how France had better economic growth, had increased competitiveness, whereas the competitiveness of Germany was declining, had higher forest direct investment that the price of electricity in France was half the price of Germany, and that actually it had a bigger influence on the European stage. The bigger influence on the European stage can be largely discussed, but the Spiegel's, or this particular analysis, certainly Sophie Peder and the economist would, has argued the same for quite a while. Now Macron, I'll tell you, within France has been criticised for his discussions with Putin, and the reluctance to enlarge the European Union until recently, he lost the support of many Central and Eastern European countries are doing that. Now he's changed his tack a bit now and has stopped his discussions with Putin and as we know, has supported the enlargement to Ukraine and et cetera, but for a while, that was really heavily criticised. He's struggling because there's no high-profile candidate from Ensemble, which is the new, you know, coalition of three parties in which Rommach is, but there's no high-profile candidate for the European elections in June 2024, he has Defense Journey, but Defense Journey doesn't have, you know, again, this high political profile to carry out a flamboyant European campaign, because at the end of the day, Macron has always been the pro-European candidate, so you would expect a very positive dynamic campaign and we're seven months out and we have no head of the list. He is obviously focused quite a bit on the Olympic Games in August 2024, lots of question marks and security on this one, and the opening ceremony is meant to be absolutely amazing, but I can tell you that the police is still in negotiations with him to try and find another way of doing it, not by the send like this because it is impossible to secure, so I'm not in the secrets of the gods, but I know this is still problematic. Once the European elections have passed and the Olympic Games are completed, no matter how either go goes, that's when the candidates for the presidential elections will start positioning themselves. Gérald Darmanin, who was a potential candidate, has declared recently that he would go according to what opinion polls, how opinion polls were placing and he would support whoever was best placed, which at the moment is Édouard Philippe, but that can change, of course. So the question is what will Macron's legacy be? I remember in 2017 he delivered this inspiring, I thought, speech in La Sorbonne, but what has happened since then, you could say very little. So that's it.