On the eve of François Bayrou’s general policy declaration, Fabien Roussel is “still in the fog”. Will the Prime Minister make a gesture towards the left on pension reform in return for “non-censorship”?
Without knowing it, the national secretary of the French Communist Party, guest of BFMTV-RMC, put pressure on the government this Monday, January 13: he expects “a clear commitment” and raises the threat of censorship, in the event that he would not be heard.
More concretely, Fabien Roussel pleads so that the “70,000 people who should have retired” before the introduction, in April 2023, of the gradual postponement of the legal retirement age to 64, can do so “as quickly as possible “.
If he speaks of “repeal” of this text, the communist assures that he does not want to stop on the vocabulary, while the socialists are now pushing for a “suspension”, after a week of negotiations in Bercy. It doesn’t matter, as long as this measure is applied for the former deputy from the North, defeated in the last legislative elections.
“We will not let ourselves be led away”
Fabien Roussel nonetheless remains attentive to the expressions used by everyone. To Yaël Braun-Pivet, Macronist president of the National Assembly, who is not “opposed in principle” to briefly “stopping” the pension reform to “re-discuss” it, he responds:
“If it is to say that these employees will continue to work (…) when they could have left, it is not putting a pause, but continuing the reform (…) If it is to tell us, perhaps that it will eventually be suspended in a year, it means taking another year (…) We will not let ourselves be led away.
-The national secretary of the PCF gets his message across. He addressed it directly to the Minister of the Economy Éric Lombard with whom he said he spoke again Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
For the government, the pressure does not only come from the left. The right is raising the decibels in the face of the prospect of a concession on pensions. “Neither suspension, nor repeal,” thundered the LR boss of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, this Saturday in an interview for Le Parisien.
A sequence summarizing the balancing act faced by François Bayrou, having to reap the favors of the left, without alienating the support of the Macronists and LR, who made up the “common base” of the previous government.
After having received on Saturday evening the ministers Éric Lombard (Economy), Amélie de Montchalin (Public Accounts) and Catherine Vautrin (Health and Labor), the Prime Minister must notably receive this Monday at 5:30 p.m. the presidents of the two chambers of Parliament, Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
