VS’is undoubtedly one of the most divisive measures of the pension reform project. The Senate, with a majority on the right, voted Saturday evening March 4 the extinction of several special regimes, while the pressure is mounting in the streets and businesses before the mobilization of March 7.
Electricians and gas workers, concerned like the RATP by this disappearance of their regime, began a renewable strike on Friday. It leads to reductions in electricity production in several nuclear power plants, without causing cuts for customers.
“If Emmanuel Macron does not want a France at a standstill and a black week in energy, it would be better for him to withdraw his reform”, warned Sébastien Ménesplier, secretary general of the CGT Energy. “We will be capable of anything,” warned Fabrice Coudour, Federal Secretary. On tour in Africa, the head of state said on Saturday that he had “not much new to say”.
READ ALSOPensions: the reform of special schemes even divides specialists
A massive mobilization on March 7
Gabriel Attal, for his part, raised his voice against the unions: it is “the French that they will block” and “the workers that they will bring to their knees”, declared the Minister of Public Accounts, on the sidelines of a visit to the Salon de l’Agriculture, calling on opponents of the reform to “responsibility”.
The mobilization of March 7, against the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, promises to be massive. According to police sources, the intelligence services expect between 1.1 and 1.4 million demonstrators throughout France. The inter-union will meet on Tuesday evening to decide on the next steps: “There is not a gravel between us”, assured France Inter on Saturday the secretary general of FO, Frédéric Souillot.
READ ALSOStrike of March 7: the disruptions expected for the day of “blocking”
“There will be general assemblies which will decide whether or not to renew” the movement on the sites on strike. In an interview at Parisianthe Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, a former socialist, defended a “left-wing reform which could have been carried out by a social-democratic government”.
“Gravediggers of our social protection”
The left, which has largely occupied the field in the Senate since the start of the debates on Thursday, argued all day against the first article of the government bill which provides for the gradual extinction of five special regimes (electricity and gas industries, RATP, Banque de France, notary clerks and employees, members of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council). The right being almost absent from the discussion.
READ ALSORetirement of civil servants: the blind spot of the reform
“You want to obstruct, we don’t”, dropped the head of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, on Saturday. “You decided to bordéliser a major sector of our energy sovereignty”, launched the president of the PS group Patrick Kanner to the address of the Minister of Labour. “You are going to go down in history as the gravediggers of our social protection. »
READ ALSOPension reform: the dangerous game of the left in the Senate
It is expected that agents recruited from September 2023 will be affiliated to the common law scheme for old-age insurance. Bruno Retailleau wants these special schemes to be abolished for current employees as well, but his proposal will be examined later. The government is against, and its amendment could be rejected, for lack of support from the centrists.
READ ALSOPensions: in the Senate too, the left “the dumbest in the world”?
For the left, the end of special regimes is “an ideological and demagogic proposal”, which will not generate financial gain. The trades concerned “are they as difficult today as yesterday? retorted the general rapporteur, Élisabeth Doineau (Centrist Union). “We have to open our eyes, we are asking for efforts from all French people, whoever they are,” she added.
Tense debates in the Senate
The debates will continue on Sunday on article 2, also sensitive, concerning the employment of seniors. The climate hitherto very balanced became tense on Saturday evening, around an imbroglio on the publication of an “opinion” of the Council of State on the bill, insistently requested by the left. The Minister of Labor assuring him that it is a “note” which does not have to be published. “I thought I understood that I was not in the National Assembly”, replied Olivier Dussopt when the socialist Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie questioned his “sincerity”.
READ ALSOPension reform: who wanted to kill Olivier Dussopt?
Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie also had a bitter exchange with the right by launching: “You have not done anything for two days, we are working. “And the rapporteur LR René-Paul Savary retorted: “You prefer the effects of the platform to the efficiency of the work”, praising the constancy of the senatorial majority on the question of pensions.
READ ALSOPensions: the threat of the Council of State
The fit of tension was brief, far from the permanent heckling that had prevailed in the National Assembly. In a grandstand at JDDfour former presidents of the Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, Claude Bartolone, Jean-Louis Debré and François de Rugy, have also denounced “a distressing spectacle”, calling for “respect for the National Assembly and its president”.