The first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure during the first campaign meeting of the New Popular Front, June 17, 2024 in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis
PHOTO AFP / Ludovic MARIN
“France needs a budget”, said the first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure on Tuesday, under penalty of “chaos” while his party is being courted by the government to avoid further censorship on budgetary texts.
“What is needed is a budget for France, because France must be governed, because I also know that chaos would in reality give rise to a situation which would firstly be unfavorable to the most vulnerable, the richest always get away with it”, declared Olivier Faure on France Inter.
“I don’t want to go into the void”
The day after a meeting in Bercy with the Minister of Finance, Éric Lombard, from the left, he nevertheless reiterated his conditions. On pensions, he demanded “a global discussion”while maintaining its request for a “suspension” of the reform raising the retirement age to 64 years, a “signal important” according to him. “I do not want to leave in a vacuum (…) There are financing needs today – this year around 3 billion, at the end of the decade, 15 billion – so we cannot consider that it would simply be necessary to repeal and leave it at that.”he argued. And he developed his request: “Start by suspending (…), having a financing conference (…) at the end of which we can transition to a new system, find alternative financing.”
Return to the 4,000 job cuts planned in National Education
Beyond that, he asked the government to reverse the 4,000 job cuts planned in National Education and to “finance Ségur”, which made it possible to increase salaries in the hospital environment after the Covid crisis. 19.
Promising to“oppose very strongly” to the measures proposed by “the right wing or even the extreme right” of the government, he repeated that “on the budgetary question, on the question of the daily life of the French, we must move forward.”
Olivier Faure repeated his position “in opposition” while being “open to compromise”. For him, “in the new Popular Front, there is a majority of parliamentarians who are for dialogue”. “If there are openings, the possibility of improving people’s lives, (…), we will be the driving force behind this change”seemed to confirm Fabien Roussel, the leader of the communists, on TF1, hoping to bring his “contribution” during the meeting in Bercy scheduled for Wednesday.
