(Paris) Key word: “acceleration”. The executive showed on Tuesday its desire to initiate all-out reforms without delay, a task which promises to be very complicated the day after a speech by Emmanuel Macron who is far from having convinced opponents of the pension reform .
The Head of State gave himself “100 days” on Monday to act “in the service of France”. Determined to reconnect with the French despite record unpopularity, he will travel to Bas-Rhin on Wednesday and Hérault on Thursday.
At no charge, he gave the social partners their roadmap: a negotiation of the “pact of life at work”, with still vague outlines, by “the end of this year” and another on vocational high schools “by summer”.
The unions had declined the invitation to come to the Élysée on Tuesday and even the employers had coolly welcomed this idea of ​​the “hundred days”.
“Social dialogue takes time,” Medef president Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux reacted on Monday. Leaving the Élysée, he recalled waiting “obviously for the unions to return” to discuss in particular the employment of seniors, while the president of the confederation of SMEs François Asselin mentioned their return the week following May 8.
But with the help of the heavyweights of the government, it is for the executive to immediately begin the offensive to end the crisis.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wanted “a strong bill” on immigration, adjourned due to social protest and in the absence of a guarantee of the vote of the deputies of the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR). “I’m sure with Les Républicains we can agree on this issue,” he said.
However, LR votes were lacking for the bill raising the legal retirement age to 64. The executive had to engage the responsibility of the government, saved with nine votes.
For his part, Budget Minister Gabriel Attal pledged to “continue to build a Marshall Plan for the middle classes”, with measures on wages and public services.
Monday evening, the President of the Republic had also mentioned as projects health, education or the fight against delinquency and fraud.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will present her roadmap next week to the Council of Ministers, according to her entourage.
A way of occupying the ground to finally move on from a second five-year term hampered by the political and social crisis of pensions?
“Restricting the concerns of the French to the sole question of pensions would be to miss the mark,” said government spokesman Olivier Véran, summing up the state of mind of an executive who dreams of closing this parenthesis.
Because the challenge remains strong despite the validation of the law by the Constitutional Council on Friday.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 24,000 people demonstrated Monday evening in France during President Macron’s speech, banging on saucepans.
“Symbolically, with these ‘casserolades’, the demonstrators want to cover with their festive din a presidential speech which is perceived by them as a form of noise without consistency and without content”, explains to AFP Pierre Lefébure, political scientist from the university. North Paris.
Immediately after his speech, the secretary general of the CFDT inter-union, Laurent Berger, had castigated “a speech on the method for a tenth time but nothing concrete”.
But while the unions and the opposition reacted to his remarks on Monday evening, Emmanuel Macron had taken a night walk in the Montparnasse district. Questioned by passers-by, he sang a Pyrenean song, Le refuge, in the middle of the street in their company, according to an astonishing video broadcast on social networks and the authenticity of which has been confirmed by his entourage. Enough to cultivate the image of an unpredictable president.
