Paris, 13 Feb. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is trying to shift pressure from the streets against its pension reform, which has resulted in four days of massive protests, to parliament in a bid to disqualify the radical left’s blocking strategy.
“Now it is in Parliament that the debate is being played out, where the fate of the text and the pension reform is being played out”, underlined Monday the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, in an interview with RTL radio as He questioned him about the trade unions’ threat to paralyze the country on March 7.
The Mayor said the unions’ warning is “not acceptable”, that after the last day of protests last Saturday – in which 963,000 people took part, according to Police data (up to 2, 5 million, according to the centrals) – They indicated that they were going to harden their strategy.
General Secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT, the country’s second-largest union), Philippe Martínez, said today that the objective for March 7 is for “the least number of people to work” and to obtain the support of the merchants who close their stores to paralyze the country.
In an interview with the BFMTV channel, Martínez said that between the day after the strikes and demonstrations on Thursday March 16 and March 7, “there will be other initiatives” and called for “maintaining pressure on the government and legislators.
An allusion to the debate in the National Assembly on the pension reform bill, which began in plenary session of the lower house on the 6th and should end next Friday, before handing over to the Senate.
The debate is marked by the thousands of amendments presented by the left, and in particular by La Francia Insumisa (LFI), which had opted for a strategy of blocking the debate criticized by the unions themselves, who would like the deputies to discuss and vote, in particular clause 7 of the bill, which is fundamental.
This article is the one that establishes that the minimum retirement age would increase, if the project went ahead, from the current 62 years to 64 years.
The Minister of Economy and Finance took advantage of these differences on how to conduct the parliamentary debate between the unions and LFI to disqualify the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“LFI is an obstacle to the democratic debate to which our country is entitled”, deplored Le Maire, who estimated that with the thousands of amendments presented, the debate “is prisoner of the chaos that LFI has imposed on Parliament”.
Another argument used by the Minister to defend the substance of the reform is that by raising the minimum retirement age to 64, France would be “in the European average”.
He pointed out that the opposition’s alternative proposals to guarantee the financial viability of the pension system are to increase social security contributions, which would mean “less purchasing power”, or to increase employers’ contributions, which would mean by “more unemployment”. ECE
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