Is the pension reform akin, as a worried minister said at the beginning of January, to a vast “poker kick” ? The government has been playing its cards one by one, since January 10, hoping to convince people of its plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 in 2030. Tuesday, February 7, 757,000 demonstrators according to the Ministry of the Interior , nearly 2 million according to the CGT, still paraded throughout the country, in processions more stripped than those of January 31. But at the top of the state, caution reigned pending the mobilization of Saturday, February 11, more feared and announced as massive.
In the aftermath of the open debates in the hemicycle of the National Assembly, the executive power advances in uncertainty. If the progress of a reform takes on a part of the theater where sensational declarations, secret contacts and backhand attacks are mixed, the government of Elisabeth Borne comes up against the blows of bluff from partners determined to play the balance of power, even if it means disrupting the classic dynamics of negotiations.
At the Ministry of Labor, there is no longer any mystery of the disappointments vis-à-vis the reformist unions, which have never uttered the long-awaited words of appeasement. “They are under pressure from a base. They lied to us”, confided Olivier Dussopt, Tuesday at daybreak. A few hours later, Laurent Berger called on the government to hear what “dignified, responsible, framed movement”otherwise “to have a real democratic problem in the long term”. The executive believes it perceives a corner sunk in union unity, between those who plead for demonstrations without strikes and those who intend to harden the action by blockages and renewable strikes.
“The Republicans haven’t lied to us yet”
While the street rumbles, the government bets on Parliament. “It is an institutional time, the Assembly is the sounding board for questions and concerns”, we insist at the Elysée. Here again, a certain vagueness reigns. The presidential camp knows that it is no longer the master of the clocks, while the alliance of the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) slows down the debates by handling the obstruction, but can just as well withdraw its 18 000 amendments and hasten the vote on the age of 64. A decisive rhythm in the discussions with the ally Les Républicains (LR). The path had seemed to take shape on the right, after the concessions announced by Elisabeth Borne on Sunday in The Sunday newspaperresponding to the request of the LR group to limit the contribution period to forty-three years for those who started working between the ages of 20 and 21.
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