Voted in 2023, the pension reform still gives rise to debate, and whether it is maintained or not could be decisive for the government of François Bayrou. While the former Prime Minister Michel Barnier refused any developments, François Bayrou reopened the dialogue, proposing a consultation of “nine months” – before rather evoking “six” – to “resume” the reform, without stopping its implementation implemented and without compromising the financial balance of the system.
Certain parties and social partners are nevertheless calling for its suspension, or a freeze, or even a repeal. Interviewed on France 2 on Saturday morning, government spokesperson Sophie Primas (LR) said “that today everything (was) on the table”. “All requests have been heard”, but “we must find the path which allows us not to degrade public finances and even to improve them”, she said. L’Express takes stock.
Request for repeal
From socialists to rebels, the left and all the major trade union organizations are still demanding the repeal of the flagship measure of the 2023 pension reform, which gradually shifts the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years. At the end of a working meeting last Wednesday in Bercy, led by the Minister of the Economy Éric Lombard, the head of the environmentalists, Marine Tondelier declared that “the repeal of the pension reform is a necessary condition” .
The CGT, through its general secretary, Sophie Binet, also gave its position in favor of repeal, indicating however that it was in the dark regarding the wishes of the Bayrou government. “Things are much too nebulous, we have not had an answer to our questions on the need, one, to talk about the financing of the repeal of the pension reform and not other subjects, and two, the need to immediately block the application of the reform”, declared Sophie Binet after an interview in Bercy with the minister.
But repeal does not appear to be an option for the government because it would cost – according to a Pension Insurance document revealed by Les Echos – 3.4 billion euros in 2025, and nearly 16 billion in 2032. Social Security is already in dire straits, its deficit reaching 18 billion in 2024.
Freezing of entry into force
If the Socialist Party advocates, like the rest of the left, a repeal, it has not shown itself reluctant to compromise, with rather the idea of freezing the reform. In other words, that the legal age of departure, supposed to gradually reach 64 years, be “frozen” at its current level of 62 and a half years, and this without setting an a priori time limit, he clarified to the AFP. “The major concession that we are asking for is to freeze the entry into force of the pension reform,” once again insisted on BFMTV on Saturday the spokesperson for the PS group in the Assembly, Arthur Delaporte, according to whom the executive “wants to succeed”. The first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, in fact said on Sunday that he expected Prime Minister François Bayrou to pronounce the word “suspension” of the pension reform on Tuesday during his general policy declaration (DPG).
For his part, ex-president François Hollande, PS deputy for Corrèze, called on France 3 to open negotiations “as soon as possible” with the social partners and at the same time to suspend the “most negative effects “of pension reform. “If there is a big step forward on pensions, that is worth a non-censorship agreement,” recognized the national secretary of the Communist Party Fabien Roussel this Monday morning on RTL.
The Prime Minister seems inclined to suspend the text for six months, reports The Point. “When I told him that we had to block the immediate application of the pension reform […] he didn’t tell me ‘no'”, declared the general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet to the weekly, after being received at Matignon on Wednesday. In its latest edition, the newspaper La Tribune Sunday further indicates that the executive is considering pausing the reform until the summer, leaving the social partners to maneuver.
The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, affirmed on Sunday that she “is not opposed in principle” to briefly “stopping” the pension reform to “re-discuss” it. The reform “is not perfect”, and even “unfair”, and “there are many subjects to still be discussed”, whether on arduousness, long careers or women’s pensions, she said. underlined, without explicitly calling for a “suspension” of the pension reform.
The right for the status quo
But this suspension divides the presidential camp, with some highlighting the cost of such a maneuver. “To suspend is to repeal, we must stop playing with words. We cannot afford to unravel the pension reform,” warned Macronist deputy Mathieu Lefèvre on RMC.
On the right wing of the political spectrum, the refusal to make concessions on reform seems implacable. The right thus threatens to leave the government if François Bayrou gives in too much to the left. In an interview given to Parisianthe boss of LR deputies Laurent Wauquiez estimated that “suspending (the reform) without an alternative scenario” would amount to “jumping into the void without a parachute”. “It will be without the Republican Right!”, he warned.
Still in the columns of Parisian On Sunday, the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, also declared that he did not want “neither suspension nor repeal” of the pension reform. “The message is clear: neither suspension nor repeal! Tuesday, the Prime Minister will make the choice. In the Senate, I will not conduct a suspension or repeal procedure,” said the LR official, who warns: “participation (in government) does not mean renunciation.