The president of France, Emmanuel Macrondefended this Wednesday vehemently the pension reform which has brought thousands of people to the streets across the country and has resulted in censure motions against his Government, remarking that it is a “necessary” law and that, when applying it, predictably this same year, he thinks of the “general interest of the country”.
This Wednesday, Macron broke the silence maintained since last Friday his Government forced the parliamentary approval of a controversial reform, at the expense of the massive you protest in the streets and that on Monday two motions of censure were voted on which obtained unprecedented support in the current legislature by theopposition.
The text proposes raising the age from 62 to 64 retirement and extends the minimum period of quotation. Macron has explained in an interview with TF1 and France 2 that he has not made these changes for “pleasure”, but to ensure the survival of the pension system: “I would have preferred not to do it”. The president, who will wait for the evaluation of the law by the Constitutional Council to promulgate it, explained that, when he joined the labor marketFrance had just ten million pensioners and, by the 2030s, “there will be 20 million”.
Macron has defended other economic measures adopted since his arrival in theElysium -for example the rise of minimum wage– and has questioned the role of the political opposition, which he has accused of hiding within its proposals a “magic formula” that would be the deficit and that would involve mortgaging future generations at the cost of not making changes today.
In contrast, he proposed an “exceptional contribution” based on the extraordinary profits of companies, in such a way that large companies go from “repurchasing their own shares” thanks to their profits to “distributing more to their employees”.
massive protests
The president has admitted that all this controversy it can take its toll in the polls and that, on the street, there is “legitimate anger”. On the role of trade unions, who this Thursday have called new stoppages to make clear their disagreement with the reform, Macron has regretted that they have not been willing to negotiate some kind of compromise measure. Likewise, and although he has recognized the right of the unions to mobilize, he has also made it clear that “he will not tolerate any excess”.
In this way, he has criticized the violent incidents registered in the protests of the last nights, especially a Paris, and has claimed that the blockades do not prevent them from carrying out “a life as normal as possible”. “We cannot accept either factions or factions”, he said in relation to spontaneous gatherings.
Political «alternative» sense
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On the future of the current cabinet, headed by the prime minister Elisabeth Borne, Macron has not dropped any changes in terms of names or measures. In fact, he has remarked that Borne has personally assumed the parliamentary responsibility of pushing forward a proposal that, as he recalled, did save the procedure in the Senate with a majority. “He already said it (Borne) in Parliament. If there is an alternative majority, that is expressed. On Monday, it became clear that there was no alternative majority,” added Macron.
On Tuesday, the president had already made it clear in a meeting at the Élysée with the parties that support the Government that there would be no changes in the cabinet nor a potential dissolution of the National Assembly or a referendum to take the pulse of public opinion.