Tossed about, rattled, distorted by dint of concessions, the pension bill nevertheless continues on its way. Latest episode, the index on senior citizens, of which the government was so proud, was rejected by the deputies overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. The crash can still be avoided, but the black box is beginning to be the subject of all the questions, so much are multiplying, even within the government, the questions and even the doubts about this text.
At the top of the pyramid, therefore at the Elysée, a man plays an essential role in the genesis of this reform: it is Alexis Kohler, the secretary general. During the campaign, he has an obsession. That the candidate president be elected not by default, but with a clear mandate, in particular on pensions. From March 2022, he warns his teams: “We need a law fairly quickly, starting this summer.”
From the start, the confusion
In April 2022, an episode already told by L’Express shows the central role played by Kohler. The day after the first round, April 11, Emmanuel Macron went in the early morning to the electoral lands of the RN, in Denain and Carvin in Hauts-de-France. The ambition is twofold: boxing in the opponent’s arena, where the poverty rate is one of the highest in France, and making a detour to the left to try to convince the approximately 7.7 million people who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round to block the far right. All day, the president-candidate reads only that on the placards of his opponents, hears only that in the mouths of onlookers who have come to welcome him warmly: retirement at 65 is no. “I see the concern! Since this morning, I hear the concern!”, He assures, surrounded by the crowd. So, in a form of improvisation, he lets go of ballast: he affirms that he has “no dogma” when asked about the legal retirement age, suggests the possibility of l lower to 64 years and evokes a review clause in 2027 or 2028. The time has already come for concessions, for parametric modifications of corners of the table. He does not yet know that he will have to navigate the next nine months between all these options, and much more.
This great controversy, he did not only have it with the country, but also with his teams at the Castle. When he returned to the Elysée after this first highly symbolic trip, his collaborators, starting with Alexis Kohler, were torn on this fateful bar of 65 years. In the left corner, the flexible ones; in the right corner, the intransigents. The secretary general of the Elysée does not budge: “Retirement at 65 is no longer a problem for anyone!” His office neighbor, who happens to be both the president and the candidate, bangs his fist on the table. “I remind you that we are on a second round, Alexis, so this is no longer the subject, slice Macron. I am not killing my five-year term for a totem in which I never believed.” Let’s translate it: the promise of a legal retirement age of 65 was for the first round, because it was a political stunt to siphon off the right – which is not lacking in salt when you know the sequence of events and the relentless efforts of LR to obtain at the start of 2023 a departure at 64 years old and not at 65 years old. Initially there was confusion…
The battle of influence wars that will pollute the months to come is significant. “For Kohler, turning 65 was an ideological victory. By going to the field, Emmanuel Macron screwed everything up because he realized that he was being sent into the wall”, loose François Bayrou in a small committee.
On April 24, 2022, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected. Pension reform? Consider it done. And quickly. During the previous five-year term, Richard Ferrand had described such a project as an excellent first reform for a second term. Except that in June, the legislative elections did not go exactly as planned: the relative majority dampened the enthusiasm of the presidential camp. The executive then says to himself that calming things down with a law on purchasing power, which the economic context born of the war in Ukraine makes necessary moreover, is not stupid. But at the Elysée, Alexis Kohler keeps up the pressure: for him, not losing the thread of priorities despite the crises is an essential point.
On July 9, 2022, the new Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne goes to the Economic Meetings in Aix-en-Provence to insist that France must work more. Just after her speech, she discreetly finds five economists: Jean-Hervé Lorenzi (president of the Circle of economists), Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (the chief economist of the Treasury), Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (the chief economist of the IMF), Philippe Aghion (professor at the College de France) and Philippe Martin (president of the Economic Analysis Council).
The discussion quickly turns to the totem of 65 years. Almost all defend the idea that this measure is socially unjust, will penalize those who worked early, often the same ones who had the most difficult jobs. Elisabeth Borne listens, asks questions, digests the answers. All summer, a handful of pension specialists, including Antoine Bozio and Camille Landais, professors at the London School of Economics, write notes and circulate them to the Elysée, Matignon, Bercy and the Ministry of Labor to try to imagine another way, another tempo. This is the beginning of the heartbreaks in Macronie. Elisabeth Borne is not the last to want, the air of nothing, to move the president – on the form, namely the calendar, as on the bottom. “Emmanuel Macron left the hand to the government, which was ‘union-centric’. In fact, it became impossible to say that the reform would make it possible to finance anything other than the pension system alone”, observes a fellow traveler of the leader of State. Little by little, the philosophy of the project evolves, without this being clearly assumed. And when, on January 10, 2023, Elisabeth Borne presents the text, the difficulties begin. “She wants to buy herself the image of a social reformer, but to put forward the theme of justice was to expose herself to a perfect boomerang,” a faithful of the president later noted.
The fault is not always that of the ministers
It’s not just Elisabeth Borne who is struggling to put forward her arguments and win her case to feed the “sweet” part of pension reform. Here and there, some members of the government go there with their little idea. This is particularly the case of the Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade Olivier Becht. The Alsatian went to find the Prime Minister and Olivier Dussopt to offer them real compensation at the starting age of 65: to offer each Frenchman, during their life, a “sabbatical” year paid for by the State, during which he could carry out a major project, get involved in an association, go on a trip… The measure, unique in the world, did not, it seems, convince the couple in charge of the mother of the reforms .
Due to a lack of political flair or a lack of anticipation, the flaws in the construction of the reform appear above all. Textbook case: the imbroglio on the minimum pension of 1,200 euros goes back a long way, and high – no, the fault is not always that of the ministers, no offense to the Elysée. During the campaign, Emmanuel Macron wears the measure, which he says will concern future pensions – except once, at prime time on April 21 on television, where he assures the increase will apply to all retirees. “As soon as we left on a departure at 65, we had reason to argue that it would concern everyone, advances a pillar of the campaign. And the electoral calculation was simple: as much to imply that all retirees would be concerned.” On his second round leaflet, the candidate evokes black on white (and even in bold) “a minimum pension for all”.
The worm is then in the fruit, although the president, on several occasions, then specifies that it would be allocated to the French who will have a “full pension”. “He spent his life saying it, indicates a minister familiar with the file. The problem is that we may have had two or three expressions that were a little too fiery which said that there would be 1.8 million of people who would touch it…” A modest way of implying that after the Head of State for lack of clarity, some members of the government, over the weeks, sealed the communication of the executive for lack of precision .
It is easier to rewrite history than to predict the future. Clearly, the executive has underestimated – some ministers acknowledge this in private – that intergenerational solidarity was no longer a mobilizing theme in the era of all-out individualism; he also underestimated that the reform was part of a vision of post-Covid work. Would it then have been necessary to rush less to better link several reforms in a large whole “our vision of work”? A pillar of the government relativizes: “Perhaps it would have been more comfortable to make the Labor law before that of the pensions, but that does not mean that it would have been more responsible. It is the progressive character which makes the acceptability of this reform. The longer you wait, the less progressive it is.”
“It is striking to note that at no time did Emmanuel Macron explain himself at length to the French on the subject, notes one of his relatives. He simply said that we should work longer, otherwise he is remained in abeyance.” Wanted or suffered, confusion has settled everywhere, among decision-makers as well as on the content. At the beginning of December, Emmanuel Macron let go in front of some of his ministers about this reform: “There is no subject of paternity!” He would be held largely responsible for the success or failure of the project. Even verticality is no longer what it used to be. Today the reform is still seeking its meaning.