French retirement reform may have political consequences far beyond the borders of France

From an American perspective, it is always intriguing to watch the strikes and protests that regularly break out across France. I always used to joke that protesting and striking is the national sport of France. But the strikes and riots in France right now, in reaction to President Emmanuel Macron's attempts to raise the retirement age in the country from 62 to 64, are extremely serious, and they could indicate future problems for not just France, but also for the European Union, and by extension the United States.

The powerful French labor unions have already gone on strike twice on January 19, 2023, and January 31, 2023 in response to Macron’s proposal. Macron’s government has hardened its stance in the face of these strikes, with the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, publicly stating the retirement age increase is “non-negotiable.” However, those across the political spectrum see this as an escalation by the Macron government, and the majority of the French public oppose the reform.

This, of course, raises the question; if Macron successfully raises the retirement age from 62 to 64, what will be the political ramifications?

Interestingly, we can actually look to a similar 2010 policy proposal in France, in which then President Nicholas Sarkozy was successful in raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Examining the effects of this 2010 policy change may provide some insight into the downstream political effects of Macron’s proposal and steadfastness.

A Quick French Political Lesson

Many of you may be less familiar with the working of the French political system works. It is what is known as a semi-presidential system, meaning it has both a president who steers policymaking and a prime minister in the legislature (National Assembly) who runs the government and controls the legislative process. When the president and the prime minister are of different parties (what the French call cohabitation) governing has had a tendency to become a little tense. However, reforms in 2000 have led to a situation in which cohabitation is increasingly unlikely (although it should be noted that currently Macron has a plurality, not a majority, in the National Assembly).
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This governmental system is fairly unusual in the democratized world, but equally as unusual is the two-stage majoritarian electoral system used in France. Presidents are chosen through a process of two elections no more than a few weeks apart. In the first stage, multiple parties field candidates. If no one candidate receives a majority of the vote (more than 50% of votes), the top-two candidates run off against each other a few weeks later in a second stage election, ensuring that the winning candidate will have received a majority of the vote.

Sarkozy's Downfall

In 2007 Sarkozy, the candidate for the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP), finished on top in the first stage of the election, receiving about 31% of the vote. The second-place candidate was Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party; SP), the UMP’s main rival at the time. In the second stage, with nearly 84% of the public voting, Sarkozy won a fairly easy victory, securing more than 53% of the vote

​Sarkozy was less fortunate in the 2012 election. He finished second in the first stage, securing just over 27% of the vote, with the Socialist candidate, Francois Hollande winning nearly 29% of the vote. In the second stage Hollande secured the victory with about 52% of the vote. Importantly, Hollande won this victory running as the candidate of a tainted Socialist Party after the presumed frontrunner for the nomination Hollande eventually won, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel worker in New York City.
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What led to Sarkozy’s star, which was on the rise, to fizzle and die a mere 5 years after he won the presidency? The answer to this might lie in his pension reform package which included raising the retirement age from 60 to 62.

French Opposition to Retirement Reform

Elections are won and lost, for the most part, on issues. Candidates for office want to focus voter attention on issues that the public largely agrees with them on. If a candidate or party can successfully control what issues become and remain salient, they are much more likely to win an election. After all, it makes sense that if voters are thinking about an issue that they agree with you on when they enter the ballot box, they are more likely to vote for you.

Sarkozy pushed through his retirement reform package on November 10, 2010, after a 2-month legislative process, raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. This push was a massive fight that led to strikes and protests across the country. These strikes led to enormous energy shortages as gasoline refineries and power plants were shut down or running at diminished capacity (something we saw in the January 31, 2023 strikes). Strikers and protestors blocked traffic and closed down transportation systems (also something we saw in the January 31, 2023 strikes), such as Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. At one point, the French police estimated there were over 1 million protestors in the streets, while the unions put the number closer to 3.5 million.

Put simply, the issue of pension reform became incredibly salient in France as a result of this 2010 legislation. Importantly, retirement reform is a third rail of French politics. A huge number of voters in 2010 vehemently disagreed with Sarkozy on this issue. This means we should expect to see changes in vote intention for the 2012 French presidential election in the polls leading up to and after the passage of this retirement age reform.

​Importantly, UMP support should not necessarily decrease as a result of Sarkozy's reforms for 2 reasons. First, there are natural election dynamics, in which undecided voters begin to decide who they will vote for as the next election approaches. This should lead to the major parties (e.g., the UMP and the Socialists in 2010) gaining support. Second, and possibly more importantly, the UMP should have gained support among the smaller group of people in France who supported increasing the retirement age, while the larger group of people opposed to increasing the retirement age should have gravitated to parties on the left, the largest of which was the Socialists in 2010. This means the Socialist Party should have seen their support increase at a faster rate than the UMP as they positioned themselves in opposition to the retirement age reforms. 

The Data

I built a database of 257 French public opinion polls fielded between the second stage of the 2007 French presidential election in May and the first stage of the 2012 French presidential election in April. Of these 257 polls, 23 were taken between the 2007 election and the passage of the retirement reform legislation, and 15 were fielded in the year before the legislation was passed.

Using inferential modeling, I looked at how polling for the first round of the 2012 election for both the UMP and the Socialist candidates changed in the year run-up to the passage of the retirement reform package, and the year after its passage. This allowed me to determine how much both UMP and Socialist support changed in response to the passage of this reform.
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Figure 1 shows the expected first stage vote share for both the UMP and the Socialist Party as the date of the retirement reform passage approached, and in the year after the reform was passed. The red line is the expected vote share for the Socialists and the blue line is the expected vote share for the UMP. Since these are estimates based on inferential statistics, they come with margins of error, which are the dashed lines (i.e., 95% confidence intervals). The vertical black line represents the day the retirement reform was passed.

A year before the law was passed, the Socialists and the UMP were running neck and neck statistically speaking (the dashed lines overlap). However, as the passage of the law approached, Socialist support started to increase more quickly than UMP support. By the time the retirement reform did pass, Socialist support was substantially higher than UMP support, and importantly, the margins of error didn’t overlap, meaning that the estimates are statistically different from one another. Put differently, we can say with 95% confidence that by the time Sarkozy's government increased the retirement age  from 60 to 62, the Socialists were performing better than Sarkozy’s party, the UMP.

Importantly, both Socialist and UMP support continue to increase over the year after the passage of the retirement reform legislation, however, at a slower rate. That said, Socialist support increases a touch faster than UMP support. At the 1 year anniversary of the increase in the retirement age (about 6 months until the 2012 election), Socialist support was expected to be about 28% while UMP support was expected to be about 26%.
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Interestingly, in the 2012 election, the Socialist nominee, Francois Hollande received 28.63% of the vote, while Sarkozy received 27.18%; pretty close to spot on with the estimates produced by my model. This suggests that the increase in the retirement age may well have been the undoing of Sarkozy.

Application to 2023 and Beyond

The political landscape in 2023 is different from 2010. The UMP has since become Les Républicains (The Republicans) and shifted harder to the right, while the Socialist Party has imploded, leaving few centrist options beyond Macron’s La République En Marche! (Republic Forward, LREM) party. Rather, the French political landscape now includes 3 major groups, Macron’s LREM, the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) led by perpetual presidential runner-up Marine Le Pen, and a new coalition of leftist parties known as the Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale (New Ecological and Social People’s Union; NUPES). The largest member of NUPES is the democratic socialist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) led by leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon. However, it also includes the Greens, the French Communist Party, a leftist party known as Generation.s, and what remains of the Socialist Party.

This is of particular importance, because, if this proposed change to retirement age follows the same path it did in 2010, it could mean growing support for LREM's main rival on the left, NUPES. Given that Jean-Luc Melenchon came in third place in the 2022 presidential election, missing the second stage by a mere 1.2 percentage points, any increase in support for NUPES could lead to a 2027 runoff including a NUPES candidate (likely Melenchon). This is of particular importance because Melenchon has been a strong critic of the European Union in the past, and has even indicated support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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While one could dismiss this as trivial, assuming that a candidate from LREM would win in the second stage, this might not be what happens. If we look at what Sarkozy’s raising of the retirement age did for the far-right National Rally (called the Front National; National Front in 2010), one can imagine a scenario in which the second stage of the 2027 election is between a Melenchon as the NUPES candidate and the far-right Marine Le Pen of the National Rally.

Figure 2 is the same as Figure 1, however, I have now included the expected vote share for the National Rally in black (the National Rally was known as the National Front in 2010, however, they are different in name only). The National Rally engages in what is known as “economic chauvinism.” What this means is that, despite being far-right, they support a large social safety net, however, they believe it should be reserved only for the “real French.” We see, in 2010, support for the National Rally increased substantially as the passage of the retirement age increase approach, and it continued to increase afterwards (the model predicts that National Rally support 1 year after the law was passed would be about 18.1%, whereas Marine Le Pen received 17.9% of the vote in 2012).

The National Rally came in second place in the first stage of the 2022 presidential election, missing the top spot by 4.7 percentage points. It is distinctly possible, though I should warn not necessarily probable, that if what we saw regarding changes in party support as a result of raising the retirement age in 2010 produces a similar effect in 2023, that we could be staring down the barrel of a second stage presidential election in 2027 that pits Melenchon, who is a regular critic of the European Union, against Marine Le Pen, who has built a career on Euroscepticism and xenophobia.

If this were to happen, it could well mean, if not a total exit from the EU, but a drawback from the EU for France. One only needs to look across the Channel to see what the ramifications of that would be for the French economy. Additionally, France is one of the most important members of the European Union and its second largest economy. A decrease in French governmental support for the EU could cause substantial disruptions to the European integration project. This would have ripple effects on every country in the European Union. Further, given the deep economic and security connections the United States has with the European Union, there is little doubt a Melenchon or Le Pen presidency in France would have detrimental effects on Americans as well.