Keeping goat cheese and cabbage (or leeks) safe is not easy. To try to satisfy the socialists, who risk voting to censure his government, François Bayrou promised this Wednesday to submit to Parliament an agreement, even partial, from the social partners on pensions.
The day before, he had announced in his general policy speech that he was restarting the 2023 reform. But if the new negotiations do not succeed, it will be the current version of the text which will persist, he warned. The First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, asked, in order not to vote on the motion of censure which will be examined on Thursday, that Parliament be seized, whatever the conclusions of the “conclave” of unions and employers scheduled for three months.
For the PS, “the account is not there”
The Prime Minister responded in part to this request. He mentioned three scenarios that could occur at the end of this “social conference” intended to revisit the contested reform of Élisabeth Borne. “Disagreement: we remain with the current text. Complete agreement: we are making a legal text. Partial agreement: we translate the partial agreement into a text to improve our retirement system, summarizes François Bayrou. It is the most frank, the most transparent, the most honest path that we could find on these subjects. . »
But he was met with rejection. “The account is not there,” retorted Patrick Kanner, leader of the PS senators. “Your speech does not allow us to have a clear vision of the general balance of your budget,” he added, saying he was “worried” to “discover the subjects on which you will make new savings”. And even “in the event that the conditions are met for us not to censor your government, we are not signing you a blank check,” he warned.
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The 66 PS elected officials must meet this Wednesday to decide on their position on the motion of censure tabled by their left-wing allies, LFI in the lead, which the Communists and Environmentalists have joined. They “obtained nothing, not even crumbs”, castigated the environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau, determined to censor a Prime Minister whom she considers “unworthy of his office”. Negotiations between the PS and the government are causing strong tensions within the alliance of left-wing parties. The vote on the motion of censure is expected on Thursday.
