Pension reform: “There is no democratic crisis”, assures Franck Riester

The long-awaited meeting between Elisabeth Borne and the inter-union to end the pension dispute ended Wednesday in a “failure” according to the unions, who see a “democratic crisis” in the Prime Minister’s refusal to withdraw the disputed reform . According to Franck Riester, “there is no democratic crisis”.

“We are talking about a reform presented during the presidential election, which takes into account a certain number of elements requested by the trade union organizations and by the political forces. The President of the Republic wanted to postpone the retirement age to 65 , finally it’s 64. It’s not the text of the government, it’s the text of Parliament, after 175 hours of debate, after several votes in the Senate, in the National Assembly… Where is the crisis? democratic?”, declared the Minister Delegate in charge of Relations with Parliament.

“We are not doing this reform to have fun”

“Whether there is strong opposition, yes, but should that prevent reform, no,” he added. “We are not doing this reform for fun. We are doing it because it is necessary to save our pay-as-you-go pension system which is threatened by future deficits.”

For her part, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne called on Friday not to “rush things” and to respect “a period of convalescence” in order to prevent the unions from “coming out humiliated from this sequence” of the pension reform, according to comments reported by the newspaper The world.

This very conciliatory tone contrasts with the remarks made by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday on the sidelines of a trip to China. He had, through his entourage, denied any “democratic crisis in France” and assured that he had a clear mandate to reform pensions. He was also worried about the “violence” that punctuates the disputes.

A mobilization in ebb

“Nearly 2 million” people demonstrated Thursday throughout France during the 11th day of action, according to the count of the inter-union, while the Ministry of the Interior has identified 570,000. A mobilization down from the previous day on March 28. Some clashes broke out between several hundred radical demonstrators and the police.

“When there is opposition to government policies, they can express themselves calmly. When there is violence, it must be sanctioned, condemned, which a certain number of political parties do not do. , starting with La France insoumise which tends to always modulate its words when it comes to violence”, observed Franck Riester.

“We can clearly see that the political project of La France insoumise is not a social project, it is a political project of chaos, to create disorder and the messing up of Parliament and our country”, he said. he thundered at the microphone of Europe 1.