Paris (EFE) against his pension reform.
In an interview published by Le Monde this Friday while Macron is on an official visit to China, Borne drops a few phrases about his intention to reach out to the unions and more generally to try to calm the situation, but without granting the centrals the which is their demand since the protests began in January: the withdrawal of the pension reform.
The prime minister insisted in the interview that if the reform goes ahead, the right moment must be found to re-establish dialogue, that “the unions do not have to leave this sequence humiliated”, that it is necessary to “respect a period of convalescence ” and that “we have to be extremely careful not to force things” because “the country needs calm”.
Words that contrast with the messages launched by Macron’s entourage during his trip to China, in which he forcefully replied in particular to the leader of the country’s first union, Laurent Berger, who had used the expression “democratic crisis” to describe the situation in France.
This environment has underlined, in its charge against Berger, that the head of state has the legitimacy that comes from his election and has recalled that in his electoral program, there was the pension reform and the delay of the retirement age.
For the prime minister, the priority would have to be to point a direction to the government before looking for political allies to support them to vote on laws in Parliament – Macron has asked her to broaden her parliamentary base – and to avoid issues that can generate conflict.
His idea is to address issues such as employment, working conditions, education and health to address problems such as the impoverishment of the middle classes.
According to Le Monde, the prime minister is waiting for Macron’s return from China to see what he thinks of all this, and at the same time specifies that the Élysée is considering different scenarios, including changing its prime minister.
An option that Borne considers to be inappropriate now with the climate of social tension that exists on the street: “this is not the time to swerve.”
Asked about this apparent move by the Prime Minister, distancing herself from Macron’s toughest position with the unions, Berger acknowledged this Friday, in an interview with the BFMTV channel, that Borne’s tone has always been one of respect and frank dialogue, well different from the one shown by Macron: “it is different from throwing gasoline on the fire”.
But regardless of the question of the tone used by one and the other, the general secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) repeated that “the most important thing in the end is whether this reform is going to be applied or not” because the opposition in the street and in public opinion “has not moved” and continues to be very much in the majority.
“Not only words are needed. The bottom line of the matter is the pension reform, ”she stressed.
After the eleventh day of national mobilization organized this Thursday, in which hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets again in demonstrations organized throughout the country, the unions once again decided jointly to organize what will be the twelfth on Thursday the 13th
It will be the eve of the 14th, a key day because it will be then when the Constitutional Council will issue its opinion on whether or not to validate the pension law, whose main and most controversial axis is to delay the minimum retirement age from currently 62 to 64 years.
