The French government faces its first major test on Thursday, with strikes and demonstrations all over France for wage increases and against the announced pension reform, crucial for Emmanuel Macron who wants a bill adopted “before the end of Winter”.
The French president, who intends to preserve his ability to reform the country, does not rule out dissolving the National Assembly in the event of a vote of a motion of censure against the government, warned Thursday the French Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt.
“If all the oppositions coalesced to adopt a motion of censure and bring down the government”, Emmanuel Macron “would defer to the French and the French would decide and say what is the new majority they want. And obviously (…) we would be campaigning for the president to be confirmed, ”said Mr. Dussopt, responsible for initiating new consultations on pensions from next week.
The government will open a new round of consultations around the pension reform, with a view to adopting a bill “before the end of winter”, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced to AFP before that. after a meeting Wednesday evening at the Élysée with the majority.
“We have chosen dialogue and consultation” with the social partners and political parties, she continued, adding that she would like “the reform to come into force in the summer of 2023”. The government wants to gradually postpone “the starting age by four months a year, culminating in 65 years in 2031”, she said, against 62 years currently.
Emmanuel Macron, elected in 2017, has pledged to reform pensions in France after a first failed attempt during his first term due to the COVID crisis.
But the liberal centrist president lost an absolute majority of MPs in June after his re-election, complicating his task of pushing laws through parliament.
With deficits mounting and public debt skyrocketing, driven in part by inflation and public support for French purchasing power, the 44-year-old president says raising the the retirement age and the decline in unemployment are the only means for the State to increase its income without raising taxes.
Mobilization on the left
His government approved pay rises for civil servants and teachers and introduced one of the most generous anti-inflation safety nets in Europe, which capped energy prices for households and contained the inflation.
But his insistence on raising the retirement age is met with rejection from unions and the left-wing opposition and remains largely unpopular in the country.
“All unions in France are against working until 64 or 65,” said Philippe Martinez, general secretary of the CGT, France’s second-largest union, on Thursday. As for participating in the consultations planned by the executive from next week, “if it is to tell us that we are discussing the extension of the retirement age, we will not go long”, a-t-t he warned.
The mobilization Thursday will be done on the other hand without the CFDT, the first union in France, which had made it known at the beginning of September that it would not participate. “It is company by company, branch by branch that we must act”, declared its secretary general, Laurent Berger.
Disturbances are expected in the train, especially in the Paris region, but not in the Paris metro. In the capital, the procession will leave at 2 p.m. (12 p.m. GMT). Among the participants, union representatives but also elected officials, the left-wing parties members of Nupes having given their support to this day of mobilization.
The latter plan to organize on October 16 a “big march against the high cost of living and climate inaction”, without the support, for a time envisaged, of the CGT.