A few days before the presentation of the budgetary texts in the Council of Ministers, on September 26, the executive continues to dangle a pension reform by way of the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS). This hypothesis, which divides even in the majority of Emmanuel Macron, also arouses controversy in a Senate dominated by the right and the center. ” We had been told about consultation and consensus, we find ourselves with an amendment on pensions to the PLFSS and 49.3 [qui permet de faire passer une loi sans discussions parlementaires, évoqué par Emmanuel Macron] »quips the president of the centrist group in the Senate, Hervé Marseille.
At the Luxembourg Palace, senators have little taste for the approach of the executive. “A reform by way of amendment at the very beginning of the discussion which falls from the sky, that is unacceptable”, thunders the leader of the senators Les Républicains (LR), Bruno Retailleau. If the executive is slow to reveal the content of its possible end-of-year reform, the senatorial majority has already warned that it will not leave the subject a dead letter, while discussions on the financing of the “Safety” start in first reading, at the end of October, in the National Assembly.
Each year, the right-wing and center senators together adopt the same amendment to the PLFSS, carried by the senator (LR) of Marne René-Paul Savary. It provides for the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, while extending the contribution period to forty-three annual installments. A compromise between the right and its centrist allies, which combines the two parameters on which the executive and the majority have been working and hesitating for several days already.
On the right, the senators assume more or less the concordance of their position with the supposed acceleration of the Head of State in his desire to reform on this highly sensitive subject. “If it doesn’t do it now, it won’t be able to do it in 2023, when there will probably be a recession in Europe and a probably more brutal decline in growth in France. If he does not assume this reform, his quinquennium is dead”, insists Bruno Retailleau. The Vendée senator defends the idea that parametric measures in the name of “purchasing power of retirees”, starting this fall, could be the first act of a major reform. However, the sole subject of a balanced pension budget reform cannot justify a blank check from the right for the overall vote of the PLFSS, warns Mr. Retailleau. He himself has already announced, at the end of August, that he would vote against the budget, as a member of the opposition and above all the LR candidate for the presidency of the party.
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