A month after far-right and hard-left parties ousted President Emmanuel Macron’s government from power in parliament, France’s business elite is struggling to adapt to a new, more antagonistic political system.
Corporate leaders from across the nation congregated in southern France for an annual business conference with the assurance that Macron’s administration could advance its pro-business reform agenda virtually unhindered for the previous five years.
Macron’s government can no longer rely on the parliament to approve its plans, and the opposition parties are eager to use their newly acquired authority to significantly revise it.
A CEO of one of the biggest industrial enterprises in France claimed that his company had spoken with several of the new legislators and that it was also paying greater attention to legislation that was now being considered.
The CEO told Reuters during a break at France’s equivalent of the Davos conference, “We are going to have to explain to a lot of new individuals in parliament that we are not the ultimate devil and that we do some good things.
The left-wing Nupes alliance is particularly anxious to demonstrate its newly acquired parliamentary might in parliament, especially with the anti-capitalist France Insoumise (France Unbowed) portion at its head.
How disruptive the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) plans to be remains to be seen. It remains to be determined if Les Republicains, a conservative group, will cooperate with Macron’s party.
In the meantime, ministers’ memories of the widespread ‘yellow vest’ street protests and violence in 2018 are still fresh, making the administration anxious to prevent the risk of adding a political crisis to an already severe cost-of-living dilemma.
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