Un new calendar, with a presentation postponed at the beginning of the year, but still a great vagueness on the content as on the method: the executive offered itself a new week of confusion on the file of pensions, real soap opera of the presidency Macron.
A relative of Stéphane Séjourné, the secretary general of the Renaissance presidential party, explained it on December 8, the day after a dinner at the top at the Elysée supposed to have established the roadmap: “we have to put a method clear on the table, so that the French see it clearly. And that we are not in a battle over age with one saying 65, the other 64. It is not good for the debate and it crystallizes the tensions around the age measurement which is not the only measure of the reform”.
At the end of these feasts, the plan was stopped. Elisabeth Borne was to present the reform on Thursday. An 8 p.m. was in the pipeline. And the postponement of the starting age to 65, the original measure of the presidential program, seemed to hold the rope firmly.
Monday, surprise, Emmanuel Macron shifts the announcement to January 10, at the opening of a session of the National Council for Refoundation, a tool created to imagine the major reforms of the country, but of which pensions are not part.
Amazement in the ranks. The president’s argument – to give time to the new leaders of LR Éric Ciotti and EELV Marine Tondelier – makes his majority smile.
That of a new hand extended to the unions is taken with more seriousness, but as much skepticism in view of the position of the CFDT, opposed to any age measurement in unison with the inter-union.
Since then, everyone returns the mistigri: a report obtained by Elisabeth Borne, according to several sources. A takeover by the Prime Minister of “unsuccessful” consultations with the Minister of Labor, according to another, which Olivier Dussopt’s entourage denies. An unfinished copy and returned to the two senders by the president, believed to be able to synthesize a participant.
In the meantime, the presentation scheduled for Thursday has turned into a “progress point” by Olivier Dussopt, from which it emerges, for the main thing, that the two main options remain on the table.
Who wants “point”?
“All this leaves an impression of great confusion”, laments a leader of the majority, severe on the “lack of experience” of the government, while for a regular in social negotiations, it is simply “the fear that speaks” .
Emmanuel Macron seems determined to open hostilities with a starting age of 65, the flagship measure of the presidential campaign which he had nevertheless toned down between the two rounds. On October 26, he said he was “open” to 64 years old coupled with an extension of the contribution period, a solution voted each year by the right in the Senate.
“What the president has chosen is: let’s not give the point before entering the stadium”, summarizes a connoisseur of the file.
Mr. Macron “knows very well where he wants to go. The question is: which path we take”, abounds a government source, for whom a majority in Parliament is achievable with the 64 years.
So, to whom “to give the point”, and when? To the social partners, and from the outset? But “the unions do not want it”, underlines a minister. In the Senate, who will examine the text after the Assembly? With the next senatorial elections, “it would be curious”, notes a source within the majority, for whom this strategy is “baroque”.
In addition, several opponents – Fabien Roussel for the PCF, Cyrielle Chatelain for EELV – are already warning against the use of 49.3, while Elisabeth Borne follows them on the budgetary texts in an almost general indifference.
Will it be the same for pensions? Bertrand Pancher, the president of the centrist Liot group in the Assembly, warned that he would vote censure if the government maintained the 65 years. Threat also brandished by some LR deputies.
Asked about the use of 49.3 in an interview with AFP, the president (Renaissance) of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet estimated that it was necessary “to do everything to avoid it”.
15/12/2022 16:20:38 – Paris (AFP) – © 2022 AFP