Back off to better blow up ? After many twists and turns, the government is attacking the new year with the most perilous of battles: that of pensions. Expected in December, the presentation of the reform aimed at lowering the legal age of departure from 62 to 64 or 65 years has been postponed after the Christmas break. A short respite before facing the hardest part of the battle and a month of January which promises to be conflictual in the face of unions and an opposition reassembled to block.
The ground was plowed last Saturday by Emmanuel Macron during his wishes for 2023. The President of the Republic recalled the rhetoric of the government for months. The reform is necessary to “ensure the balance of our system for the years and decades to come” and “consolidate our pay-as-you-go pension system”, and it must be implemented quickly, from the end of summer 2023. A desire to go quickly which is not unrelated to the economic situation. Rates are going up and it’s time to find savings after the crazy years of “whatever it takes”. Now instructs Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to go to the front to convince the French, rally Les Républicains and defuse the opposition and the unions. A final lap is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday with the social partners in Matignon to close the cycle of consultations.
A hot month of January
The game promises to be difficult to play. Already reassembled against the decline in the retirement age, the unions have for several months accumulated reasons to oppose. For them, the new method advocated by Emmanuel Macron during his re-election is for the moment a chimera. The desire to transfer the collection of supplementary pension contributions from AGIRC-ARRCO to URSSAF raised their eyebrows. The last blow was given before Christmas, when the draft decree implementing the unemployment insurance reform was unveiled, with the surprise addition of an additional turn of the screw: the reduction of 40% benefit period if the unemployment rate drops below 6%.
Hand in hand with the leftist opposition, which is not going to miss the opportunity to recover its health by doing everything to sow obstacles in the way of the government, the unions are promising a scorching month of January. Will they be able to convince the French to mobilize massively? Inflation could dampen enthusiasm – difficult to lose a day’s pay when your real salary melts like snow in the sun – or, on the contrary, stir up the anger of workers who believe that their situation continues to deteriorate. It also remains to convince the enemy brothers of the Republicans, caught between a reform that Valérie Pécresse called for during the presidential campaign, and the desire to assert their specificity, despite everything opposing the government on this subject. No doubt, the coming weeks will be explosive.