> France passed through unconstitutional reforms without the votes
As confirmed by higher courts, including the constitutional one, the reforms were constitutional and pushed through via a constitutional measure (49.3) that gives the government the (limited in number of attempts) power to force legislation, unless a motion of no confidence brings them down. The fact that the motions didn't get a majority means that the reforms had enough votes for them, but the members of parliament didn't want to be directly associated with having voted for them, which required the maneuver. The reforms are highly unpopular, controversial, imperfect, but in the end were needed. You could frame it as stealing from the people, I'd frame it as an imperfect attempt to ensure a long-term financial stability (France spends a lot on pensions, regularly runs deficits, and the projections were pretty terrible - optimistic scenarios for 2050 had 15% of the GDP going for pensions, for a median Quality of Life 75% of that of the median active worker. That's fundamentally unsustainable, and vague populist "we'll just tax X" won't fix it. We could have had a better reform, but I'll take a poor one over none at all).
As confirmed by higher courts, including the constitutional one, the reforms were constitutional and pushed through via a constitutional measure (49.3) that gives the government the (limited in number of attempts) power to force legislation, unless a motion of no confidence brings them down. The fact that the motions didn't get a majority means that the reforms had enough votes for them, but the members of parliament didn't want to be directly associated with having voted for them, which required the maneuver. The reforms are highly unpopular, controversial, imperfect, but in the end were needed. You could frame it as stealing from the people, I'd frame it as an imperfect attempt to ensure a long-term financial stability (France spends a lot on pensions, regularly runs deficits, and the projections were pretty terrible - optimistic scenarios for 2050 had 15% of the GDP going for pensions, for a median Quality of Life 75% of that of the median active worker. That's fundamentally unsustainable, and vague populist "we'll just tax X" won't fix it. We could have had a better reform, but I'll take a poor one over none at all).