He said he wanted this meeting “whatever the decision of the Constitutional Council” on the disputed pension reform. Emmanuel Macron invited the unions to find him on Tuesday at the Élysée, the presidency announced on Friday afternoon. “It will necessarily be the start of a cycle that the president and the government will continue in the coming weeks with the social partners. The door of the Élysée will remain open, without preconditions, for this dialogue”, commented the entourage of the Head of State, while the Sages validated the essentials of the reform, which bets on a postponement from 62 to 64 years of retirement age.
The invitation went out… but hit a wall. The inter-union announced at the end of the day that it refused to meet the president. “We will not discuss, as long as the reform will not be withdrawn”, warns with the Parisian François Hommeril, secretary general of the CFE-CGC. Sophie Binet, head of the CGT, confirmed that there would be no meeting with the executive before May 1, national labor day during which they will march together. The decision had been recorded this Thursday evening by the eight trade unions, which announced this Friday in a press release that they will meet on April 17.
The unions, which have so far presented a united front against this reform, said Thursday that they intended to continue the “fight” even in the event of validation by the Elders, in particular during the traditional demonstrations of May 1st.
The intersyndicale, which continues to demand the withdrawal or non-application of the retirement age at 64, asked Macron not to promulgate the reform, “the only way to calm the anger that is expressed in the country”. The secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger had estimated Thursday that the president had to respect a “period of decency” before trying to renew the dialogue with the social partners.
“Staying the course is my motto”
The new number one of the CGT Sophie Binet had suggested that the unions would be reluctant to meet the head of state if he promulgated the law before receiving them. However, the Élysée affirmed that if the text is validated, Emmanuel Macron should promulgate it in “the following days, as is customary for the President of the Republic who promulgates all the laws since 2017 the next day or the day after tomorrow”.
The unions had asked to be received by the Head of State during the review of the reform in Parliament, but the latter had postponed a possible meeting after the decision of the Elders.
“It’s when you set a course with an ambition that you can move”, declared the president this Friday morning, during a visit to the site of Notre-Dame de Paris, four years after a fire ravaged and a few hours before the decision of the Constitutional Council on its pension reform.
“Staying the course is my motto”, insisted the Head of State who had given himself five years to rebuild the building, the spire of which in particular collapsed on April 15, 2019, a reference, also to pension reform. After three months of social and political crisis, the Constitutional Council must render its decision on Friday around 6 p.m. on the highly contested pension reform which lowers the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
Shortly before the arrival of the president, demonstrators had installed a red banner of the CGT, demanding retirement at 60 and launched smoke bombs from a river boat past the foot of the cathedral.