Reforming the pension system “is not easy” but it is “essential”, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told France 2 on Thursday. “It is essential to carry out a reform to preserve our pay-as-you-go pension system”, even if “asking the French to work gradually longer is not easy”, said the head of government, two days after a new massive mobilization of opponents to this reform.
Asked if she would say again today that this reform is “right”, she did not use this word again. “We need justice in the way we distribute the effort among the French,” she said only. The government has been criticized for saying when it presented its reform that it was “fair” when there will remain disparities in contribution periods and those who started working younger will have to contribute longer to the system. The situation of some women was also highlighted. The executive has since refocused its message on the effort required of the French and on the “indispensable” nature of the reform.
The Prime Minister “does not envisage the hypothesis” of recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the adoption of a text without a vote except a motion of censure, for the pension reform. “I don’t consider that hypothesis. I am looking for compromises on this text as on all those that I present to Parliament, “replied on France 2 the Prime Minister, while the government does not have an absolute majority in the National Assembly, and has already resorted ten times in 49.3 for the adoption of budgetary texts.
She also promised a “debate” in the Assembly on long careers, on which the leader of the right-wing deputies, Olivier Marleix, received at Matignon on Wednesday, had mentioned common ground. On women, some of whom are penalized by the reform, she admitted that the effort required concerns “women as well as men” but “not those who started working early, who have difficult jobs”, or “who have had choppy careers.”
“We just relive the press conference (presentation of the project): retirement for dummies. As if there hadn’t been two days of mobilization. We would have liked a little empathy, ”reacted the boss of the CFDT Laurent Berger, who is opposed, like all the unions, to the postponement of the starting age from 62 to 64 years old. He called for “amplifying the movement”. The President of the Republicans Eric Ciotti, on whom the government is counting on to pass its reform, found the Prime Minister “struggling” and “unconvincing in her explanations”, believing that there is “nothing new on Table “.
