“It’s a small reform”, assured Mathieu Laine, professor of Humanities at Sciences Po and columnist at the Figaro and to Echoes, on Europe 1 Thursday. The pension reform “is finally quite accounting, completely natural, social in many respects… At one time or another, our system does not hold, it will crack so we cannot not do this reform “, he continued.
Pension reform, “a meeting clause”
Mathieu Laine also says he recognizes “the complexity” of the government “to move a few lines”. “I know some members of this team and I have a lot of empathy for them,” he slipped. And faced with the challenge of the French and the unions, the essayist assures him, the head of state “must not back down”. “There was a democratic expression through a vote and for the moment he was very clear in this regard. I think we have to do [cette réforme] and especially if he doesn’t, it’s almost the end of the five-year term,” he said.
Will this reform make it possible to preserve our pay-as-you-go system? “Certainly not,” replied the author of The company of seers published by Grasset. “The real difficulty of this reform is that it is a clause of appointment for a few years later. It is an adaptation to the extension of life. That said, I think that it is missing in the political world, a capacity for work and innovation which, without caricature, comes to say that it would be necessary to put a slice of capitalization which would allow the French to participate in the financing of the economy and the rise in value .”
Work, “a fabulous capacity for emancipation”
But in a few years, the relationship of young people to work has changed. Some of these young people do not have the same link to employment as their elders – a change accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis – and are demonstrating against pension reform. A revolution that Mathieu Laine understands even if he persists and signs: work is a capacity for emancipation. “You can have, at some point in your life when you’re younger, the temptation to go do something else, not to work, or to work less. That said, it’s not being horribly reactive or realistic or dark than to say that in reality, work is a fabulous capacity for emancipation.”
“Of course there is hardship, but I think there is a bit of work for this new generation to recreate the right incentives to go and take advantage of what work brings to life,” he said. he adds.