For Thierry Breton, “the financial markets are watching” on the pension reform. Patryk Ogorzalek/Election Agency / REUTERS
For the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, the decision is taken by the Member States. But the French indebtedness makes it almost compulsory.
Thierry Breton is categorical. Europe does not askabsolutely not“It is up to France to reform pensions, “Europe asks for nothing!“, he decides. Monday morning at the microphone of France Info, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market wanted to dot the “i” once and for all. He himself has too often caught wind of this biased argument put forward by opponents of Emmanuel Macron’s project, to which he responds with a strong backhand: “If this were the case, there would not be a disparity in retirement ages in Europe“. On this point, the Member States are therefore relatively free vis-à-vis the European Union. “It is up to the states to decide what they want to do, and they do it“, he summarizes.
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However, raising the retirement age seems to be “the trendfor most European countries. “Given the demographic evolution, almost all States are gradually moving beyond the age of 65“. Nothing exceptional therefore, according to him, in the transition from 62 to 64 years. Especially since France has one of the lowest retirement ages of the 27 European countries. However, in the event that Emmanuel Macron withdraws his reform to everyone’s surprise, Thierry Breton recognizes that Europe would not have a say.
To understand the need for this reform, it is necessary, according to the European commissioner, to turn to the financial markets. The great specificity of our country lies in its extraordinary debt. “France is today the European country with the largest debt in absolute value”, observes Thierry Breton. This means that our country is going fromthe most active wayon the markets to finance themselves. Clearly, France is the European country most dependent on the goodwill of the financial markets. Therefore, according to him, it is not the European Union but “the financial markets that are oppositefor pension reform. Raising the retirement age would therefore be the guarantee for the financiers of French goodwill. For Thierry Breton, France doesn’t really have a choice: “When we have the largest debt in volume and we are the leading debt issuer in Europe, we have less room for maneuver than those who are not in this situation”. According to the European commissioner, if France had not taken on so much debt, it would have had more leeway on the file.
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