“Audacity” to “resist headwinds”: Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne sounded Wednesday the government’s mobilization on the verge of the trial by fire on pensions on which the turnaround for the second five-year term of the leader of the state will depend.
Time was serious for the first Cabinet meeting in 2023, with a climate overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation weighing on businesses and the French, and a health system out of breath.
First major mortgage at the beginning of the year, the pension reform which will be presented to the French on January 10th and then on the 23rd in the Council of Ministers, before a potentially stormy examination in the National Assembly and the risk of a catastrophe on the street.
This context “will require resolution, self-denial on the part of everyone here, resistance to headwinds, but also imagination”, said Elisabeth Borne, presenting the government’s best wishes to the President of the Republic, as tradition dictates at the beginning of the school year in January.
“We will therefore have to be inventive”, “and at the same time stay the course”, developed the head of government, according to comments reported to AFP by several participants.
In response, Emmanuel Macron called on his ministers “to be bold and to remain attentive to the concerns of the French”, government spokesman Olivier Véran later explained to the press.
Like every year, in early January, the government met for the first time in Place Beauvau for the traditional back-to-school breakfast at the Ministry of the Interior. On the large table, everyone found a small red gift box.
Then the ministers joined in groups, and on foot, to the Elysee Palace located just opposite to attend the Cabinet meeting.
There was “the will to show cohesion, a functioning government behind the president,” estimates Anne-Charlène Bezzina, professor of public law at the University of Rouen.
The Head of State had confirmed, in his greetings to the French on 31 December, that 2023 would be the year of the pension reform, inviting his fellow citizens to “unity” so as not to give in to the “spirit of division” in “times like this difficult”.
– No “totems” –
On the starting age, unions and oppositions are against the wind, we pass to 64 or 65 years, against the current 62.
The government does not turn 65 into a “totem pole”, Elisabeth Borne reiterated on Tuesday, trying to lay the foundations for a compromise one last time.
“Gradually working longer will allow pensions to improve,” he said Wednesday.
If the cursor stops at 64, Emmanuel Macron will enjoy remembering that he himself raised this possibility in the spring. “He is not the bad president against the nice premier”, assures a member of the majority, while others have been able to describe, in recent weeks, a head of state on a more decisive line than that led by Elisabeth Thick.
The general secretary of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, whose executive hopes less frontal opposition to his project, said Wednesday that he had “the feeling that it will be 64 years” … to reiterate better that, in any case, it will be “unacceptable ” also for his reformist union.
From mid-January everyone will have their eyes on the social climate. Will the French take to the streets en masse to denounce the pension reform? Will the country be paralyzed by the strikes?
“Large-scale crises generally do not occur when the population is at its worst, but on the contrary in periods of mild uplift in morale,” says Anne-Charlène Bezzina.
Even if a “little spark can light the flame” in an “unpredictable” way if anger and tensions “combine”, “we are rather in the hollow of the wave, the atmosphere is gloomy, people are a bit suffocated by bad news,” he told AFP.
In any case, the executive is determined to go through with it.
“Are we approaching the pension reform with the idea of giving up? No, he would not be responsible,” assured Olivier Véran.
“We want to do it, not for the pleasure of carrying out a pension reform, it is never pleasant for a government”, “but we want to do it because it is our job to guarantee the pension system for the French”, he insisted.
The government spokesman judged a possible agreement with the right to vote on the text in the Assembly as “rather on the right track”.
