Pats on the back and towing, Jean Castex plunges into the presidential campaign

In his style combining pats on the back and playful arrests, Prime Minister Jean Castex plunged straight into the presidential campaign on Thursday by walking the streets of Raincy (Seine-Saint-Denis), where he was interpellated in particular on the retirement at age 65.

A follower of long field trips far from the Parisian lights which marked his time at Matignon, Jean Castex confided that he had had ants in his legs for a week and the start of the reserve period which forced ministerial outings and expressions to the approaching the first round of the presidential election.

With his pats on the back, his playful interpellations and his observations struck at the corner of common sense, the Prime Minister does not sulk his pleasure this Thursday morning in Seine-Saint-Denis, fluttering, for three hours, from one trade to another. another to distribute “a little literature”, namely an 8-page prospectus containing Emmanuel Macron’s key measures.

“I feel that he would sell refrigerators to Eskimos”

“Ah! I have a feeling that he would sell refrigerators to the Eskimos”, he says to a salesman of telephones hilariously, slipping the paper into his hands, after having raved about a bottle of Madiran from the Brumont house at the wine merchant, and confessed to a laboratory assistant to be “cosy” at the time of being stung. As for high school students on the go and eager for selfies, he advises them to listen carefully to the civics lesson in the afternoon, “so you can ask what a Prime Minister is for”.

At the Monoprix, he also talks with the two repairers of an escalator on the state of the world and this conflict in the east which “put a blow” to the economic recovery, “when we had just experienced the Covid crisis. “. Shaking his head, the head of government whispered to the two workers: “we have to hang on”. “The French are very worried about the war in Ukraine. Mr. Putin, free elections, he doesn’t care. The best way to respond to all this is to exercise our civil rights. And make the best choice for France”, he will advance a little later.

But it is above all the theme of pensions that spontaneously invites itself into the discussions, the proposal to raise the retirement age to 65 years raising many questions.

Concerns around pension reform

“I wanted to know if I was concerned,” asks a cashier born in 1963 to Mr. Castex. She who thought “to escape it” will leave with a half-answer: “to see. The modalities still remain to be agreed” with the social partners.

A butcher argues for the need to take long careers into account. “I hope I will retire at 60 because I started young,” he said, supported by a Rungis market delivery man on tour, stressing the hardship of a job that forces him to wake up. at 1 a.m. This concern around the pension reform, “it’s normal, it’s not a small subject at all, it must be explained”, concedes Jean Castex. Castex.

“We are going to simplify this, with calm, in listening, in discussion. The objective is to live better when we are retired, by the money that we will put in health, in dependency. C It’s a global reform,” he pleads to the press.

While the previous reform was shelved because it was ultimately judged by Emmanuel Macron to be “too anxiety-provoking”, is this one more likely to reassure? “Leaving the pensions eaten away by the deficit, doing nothing, that’s very anxiety-provoking. For my children, that would scare me very much”, argues the Prime Minister again, before resuming his distribution of leaflets escorted by the mayor of Raincy Jean-Michel Genestier.

It is useless, however, to try to guess behind the energy deployed by Jean Castex any ambition for the future, while his political future beyond April is shrouded in mystery. “I am head of government and I have to explain to our fellow citizens what we did, why we did it, why we couldn’t do everything and why we had difficulties,” he repeats. -he. “My personal fate is of no great importance”.