He had so far only spoken on rare occasions in public on the pension reform, still under consideration in Parliament. Emmanuel Macron estimated, Wednesday, February 15 during the Council of Ministers, that the oppositions of both right and left “no longer have a compass and are totally lost” in the debate on pensions, informed Agence France- Press (AFP) two participants. Words confirmed to Le Monde by a participant in the Council of Ministers.

“They [the opponents] are completely lost and consider as usual that the French are only the decoration of their action because they are not at the heart of their concerns”, added the head of state, according to these two sources. , which confirmed comments initially reported by Le Figaro.

In a hint to the right, he remarked that “those who defended 65 dry less than a year ago now oppose 64 with trimmings.” The president also criticized those, on the left, “who defended and voted for the Touraine reform” under the presidency of socialist François Hollande and “now denounce it”.

In addition “the left has been asking us for weeks to do more on senior unemployment, but applauds standing with the RN when it manages to remove a measure designed for this purpose”, he added. Mr. Macron was referring to the rejection, on Tuesday evening, by the deputies, of an article of the pension reform establishing a “senior index” to measure the employment of older employees in companies, a setback for the executive.

The RN files a notice of censorship

So that these same deputies opposed to the reform “can express their rejection of this text”, Marine Le Pen tabled a motion of censure with her National Rally (RN) group.

While the debates are due to end Friday at midnight, “it is clear that no vote will be possible on Article 7” increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64, “and even less on the entire bill,” the far-right leader explains in the text of her motion. The latter must be debated and put to the vote within a period of between forty-eight hours after its tabling – i.e. Friday, 5:55 p.m. – and three sitting days later, i.e. Wednesday, February 22. The other groups immediately ruled out voting for this motion, dooming it to failure.

“The few days of discussions in the hemicycle have shown that in reality the major measure of the text was indeed the passage of the starting age to 64 and that the rest of the measures were artifices in no way able to compensate for the brutality , the injustice and the anti-social character of this reform”, writes Ms. Le Pen in her text, considering that “it would therefore be undemocratic if the representatives of the nation could not express themselves on this reform”.