Bernard Cazeneuve, former Prime Minister of François Hollande, was the guest of the 8:30 a.m. france infoTuesday, September 20, 2022. War in Ukraine, pension reform, work value… He answers questions from Salhia Brakhlia and Marc Fauvelle.
War in Ukraine: leaving nuclear power would be an “absurdity” according to Cazeneuve
“There is an absurdity at a time when we are experiencing the Ukrainian crisis, (…) to indicate that the solution is to phase out nuclear power”, says Bernard Cazeneuve. For him, “it is not because we are modernizing a sector for which we have skills and assets that we are giving up developing renewable energies”.
“The right strategy is to ensure that maintenance work on existing plants takes place”continues the former Prime Minister, “that we can replace old power stations with new reactors, even if they are smaller, that we continue to invest in the nuclear power sector”. And all this he adds, “with the prospect of rebalancing the French energy mix”.
Pensions: “There is no left-wing reform” without “working social democracy”
“If we want a reform [des retraites] which is a reform of the left, several conditions must be met”, says Bernard Cazeneuve. The former Minister of the Interior – questioned about the extension of the duration of contributions to 43 years wanted by François Hollande and accelerated today by the current government – details these conditions.
Firstly for Bernard Cazeneuve, “there is no leftist reform when there is no functioning social democracy”. For the former Prime Minister, this dialogue must be established between “trade unions and employers’ organizations and the ministries concerned, so as to ensure that the reform is fair”. It also relies on “the report of the Pensions Orientation Committee” which he describes as “complex” and who is not “not quite conclusive” to support his point. “We must therefore submit the conclusions of this report to social dialogue.”
“The value of work has always been at the heart of left-wing thought”, says Cazeneuve
“What is the historic struggle of the left over the long period of its history? It is a fight so that everyone can access dignity and autonomy through education and work.“, he continues, returning to the “work value” defended by the boss of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel. “The value of work has always been at the heart of left-wing thinking”affirms Bernard Cazeneuve, for whom the latter is “always mobilized so that those who were in the world of work are not enslaved by it“.
Fabien Roussel “says nothing but a historical reality by assuming the history of his own party and he is immediately excommunicated for having dared to say what Jean-Luc Mélenchon said a few years ago on television: it is better to ‘autonomy and dignity through work’. For Bernard Cazeneuve, “you have to have lost your mind not to recognize it”.
Find the entire “8:30 franceinfo” of Tuesday, September 20, 2022: