ABefore even knowing the details of the pension reform, announced Tuesday, January 10 by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the left is on a war footing. All shades combined, she promises to engage in a Homeric fight against the project defended by Emmanuel Macron. So fire on the “work longer” to try to stem the return of the deficit.
Combining the fight in Parliament from February onwards and street demonstrations in support of the unions, unanimously hostile to the project, she positioned herself as a defender of the weakest, worked to reactivate the figure of the “president of the rich” and made of the Head of State the inventor of a “regressive tax weighing exclusively on the least educated”.
The formula, put forward by the economist Thomas Piketty in his last column published in The world, is likely to flourish in the coming weeks and put the government on the defensive. Unless it unveils a derogatory device for long careers that is powerfully corrective, it will, in fact, find it difficult to deny that the impact of its reform, which consists in pushing back the legal retirement age to 64, will be particularly felt by those who started work early, employees and workers in particular. It is on the defense of the popular electorate that all opponents of Emmanuel Macron are now focusing: the left, the National Rally and even some of the Republican deputies.
The promise to protect the weakest is coupled, on the left, with the desire to make them dream. The restoration of retirement at age 60, buried by years of government culture, is once again on everyone’s lips. He figured in the presidential project of the communist Fabien Roussel and the “rebellious” Jean-Luc Mélenchon. It was included, in May 2022, in the legislative project of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes).
Symbolic weight
The socialist Olivier Faure and the ecologist Marine Tondelier also take it up on their own, aware of the symbolic weight of this measure which had been carried by the candidate Mitterrand and implemented under his aegis, one year after his victory in the presidential election. of 1981. The ordinance of March 26, 1982 had opened the possibility for employees aged 60 who so wished to benefit from a full retirement pension as long as they provided proof of an insurance period of at least 150 quarters. Until then, they had to wait 65 years.
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