The French government adopted Monday in the Council of Ministers its controversial pension reform, showing its determination to go all the way without giving in on the main demands of the unions, who intend to amplify the mobilization against this flagship project of President Emmanuel Macron.
At the end of the Council, the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, closed the door to any decline on the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64, at the heart of the dispute.
“To come back to this point would be to renounce the return to equilibrium of the system,” he declared.
The postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 is rejected by the unions, unanimously, as well as by most of the opposition and, according to polls, a large majority of French people.
After a first day of strikes and demonstrations, which brought together Thursday between one and two million people in the street, and before the next mobilization scheduled for January 31, Emmanuel Macron and his executive are working to put the protest into perspective, and reaffirm their objective: a parliamentary debate at a run for an entry into force of the contested project in the summer.
The Head of State estimated on Sunday that he had already shown “openness” in relation to the program for his second five-year term, which initially provided for 65 years.
He said he wished “that the government with the parliamentarians” could still “adjust” the text.
Before being more inflexible: “the needs” are “known”, and “I believe that there, now, we must be able to move forward”.
Its ministers therefore take turns to ensure that they are ready for “dialogue” in order to “enrich” the text… but only on the margins.
“Each time an amendment will allow us to improve the text without giving up the return to balance in 2030 or the fundamentals of the reform, obviously we will be open to it”, simply said Mr. Dussopt on Monday during a meeting. long, very technical presentation, without advancing any leads in this direction.
“Even stronger” mobilization
Not enough to convince opponents of the reform – all parties except the right, the Republicans – who tirelessly demand the outright withdrawal of “age measures”.
La France insoumise (radical left) promised “a determined opposition”, while the far-right National Rally party proposed a “referendum” as a “top exit”.
The unions, for their part, hope to further amplify the mobilization. “We hope to do even stronger on the 31st”, warned the secretary general of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, stressing that “until then, every day there will be initiatives in companies, in the departments”.
As for the leader of the reformist trade union CFDT, Laurent Berger, he deplored the form chosen by the executive to examine his bill: an amending budget for Social Security, which makes it possible to limit the debates in time and to use leisure the weapon of 49.3, which allows the government to engage its responsibility and to have a text adopted without going through the parliamentary vote.
“You cannot evade this text on pensions, in this social climate”, he argued on France 5.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest, without the pension systems being completely comparable. It is 65 years in Germany, Belgium or Spain, 67 years in Denmark, according to the Center for European and International Social Security Liaison, a French public body.
The government has chosen to extend working hours in response to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population.
He defends his project by presenting it as a “conveyor of social progress” in particular by upgrading small pensions.