France is preparing for intense demonstrations, the government due to unveil its pension reform on Tuesday, for which the retirement age will probably be pushed back to 64, a will of President Macron being unanimous against it in the trade union world.
“If Emmanuel Macron wants to make her his mother of reforms […] for us it will be the mother of battles, ”warns the boss of the Force Ouvrière (FO) union Frédéric Souillot, opposed to this reform like all the trade unions and the political opposition, apart from the more conciliatory right.
France has experienced a series of major reforms of its pension systems over the past thirty years to respond to the aging of the population and the financial deterioration of its funds.
Almost every time, the announced extension of the working time had provoked social movements, in a country where the employment rate of the elderly is also particularly low.
“The only lever we have is to work longer,” insisted the French president, however.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne could, according to several of her interlocutors, propose a postponement of the legal age of departure to 64 years, instead of 62 currently, after having considered 65 years.
This postponement would be associated with an acceleration of the extension of the contribution period, which would increase to 43 years, before the 2035 horizon set by a previous reform.
The executive hopes to reduce spending by 2030. He would be ready to raise the minimum pension to 1200 euros for all retirees.
“Ideological” reform
But age measurement remains highly unpopular. More than two-thirds of French people (68%) are against the postponement to 64, according to an IFOP-Fiducial survey.
It is in the street that “the debate will take place”, faced with an “ideological” “anti-social” reform and the “service of a favored class”, affirms the new boss of the Greens, Marine Tondelier.
But “I think the government will do everything to dissuade us from going to demonstrate with strong repression,” she continued on France Inter-franceinfo-Le Monde.
On the political spectrum, the oppositions of the left, radical left and extreme right have all already expressed their opposition to a reform described as “unjust”.
The French government therefore hopes to rally the elected representatives of the moderate right (Les Républicains-LR), whose boss Éric Ciotti has conversely already said he is ready to “vote a fair reform”.
An LR vote could avoid the use of 49.3, this device accused of being undemocratic, already used a dozen times under the second term of Emmanuel Macron since his party lost the majority in the National Assembly, which allows executive to pass a bill without a vote.
The text will be examined by the Council of Ministers on January 23, but the unions, which meet on Tuesday evening, plan to mobilize before, while the left-wing coalition NUPES is holding a meeting on January 10 and 17 and LFI (radical left) is demonstrating the 21.
The bill must pass in committee at the National Assembly from January 30, and in the hemicycle on February 6.
The boss of the CGT Philippe Martinez is ironic about the “feat” of the executive which brings the unions together in action for the first time in 12 years.
“The trade union and political front will be totally united in this battle,” LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard promised on the BFMTV channel.
On Saturday, the “yellow vests” – whose rallies for more than a year had made Emmanuel Macron falter during his first term – hit the pavement again.
Only 4,700 people, including 2,000 in Paris, according to the Ministry of the Interior, were present for this first rally, punctuated by songs hostile to the French president, but without the violence or clashes between demonstrators and the police who had punctuated the movement from late 2018 to early 2020.
“It will grow with the pension reform, we start again”, predicted however Hasna Kenider, an administrative assistant and protester.