For several weeks now, the boss of the Modem has been engaged in a showdown with Emmanuel Macron on pension reform. Renaud Dély’s political editorial.
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We know: the Head of State is tempted to go quickly to initiate this pension reform, a real flagship reform of his second term which aims to postpone the legal retirement age to 64 or 65 years. It could integrate it by amendment into the Social Security financing bill, the examination of which will begin on October 20. So for a week, François Bayrou has been putting pressure on the Elysée. “We do not govern against the people“, he asserted Sunday at the end of the parliamentary days of the Modem. The centrist leader rejects everything”forced passage” in the Assembly. In his eyes, there is no hurry, and it is urgent to wait so as not to further antagonize the opposition and especially the social partners who are already upwind.
Is it just a timing difference? No, it’s a divergence of method but which is in the process of turning into a fundamental political disagreement. On the one hand, Emmanuel Macron does not want to postpone this capital reform announced at the start of his first five-year term. The Elysée highlights the recent report of the Pensions Orientation Council, to insist on the urgency of bailing out public finances. Reason why Gabriel Attal, the Minister of Public Accounts, repeated in the Sunday newspaper : “We will reform pensions!.
Hesitation at the top
Except that for François Bayrou, it is not only an accounting and financial reform, but a “social reform” which concerns the relationship to work, health, aging, affects all generations and requires, according to him, four months of consultation. And this all the more so since the Head of State has promised a “change of method“with the creation of a National Council for Refoundation, the reins of which he entrusted to François Bayrou!
And, without a doubt, a “49-3” on the pensions would finish the CNR. The CFDT, one of the few confederations to have played the game would slam the door. Hence the hesitation at the top on the way forward. Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne will bring together the leaders of the majority and the ministers concerned with pensions on Wednesday. And we understand that the outcome of this conflict undoubtedly depends on the turn of this second five-year term. If François Bayrou ends up convincing Emmanuel Macron to take his time, he could establish himself as the key man in a perilous mandate in view of the social storms that are looming.