“The executive’s amateurism on pensions contrasts with the image of seriousness and efficiency of the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017”

“We are in an aging society, it’s a chance. It is therefore normal that we work longer. » If Emmanuel Macron had been told, almost a year ago to the day, when presenting his program for the 2022 presidential election, that one of his main points would bring France to its most serious political and social crisis since the “yellow vests”, would he still have supported the need to increase the legal age [de la retraite] gradually (…) up to 65 years old » (target reduced to 64 years since)? Very clever who could say today.

Twelve months and ten days of demonstrations later, it is clear that the executive has failed to convince. Not only did the government fail to unite a solid political majority around its objective and chose to resort to Article 49.3 to have the bill passed without a vote, but it also appeared to be the one who refuses the outstretched hand from the unions, whose president again regretted, on March 22 on television, “ that none (…) offered a compromise”. In doing so, he deprived himself of welcome relays in a moment of unprecedented social tension.

However, there is more astonishing. Even before the social tensions that followed the use of 49.3, communication errors and other substantive approximations punctuated political and then parliamentary debates. These are the criticisms emanating from a benevolent public during the first public meetings held in January by the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, or the Minister for Labor, Olivier Dussopt, during which it was already very difficult to distinguish what was covered by the current reform or previous ones (Touraine reform of 2014 establishing forty-three contribution years for a full-rate pension, gradual abolition of autonomous schemes, etc.).

Scent of amateurism

It’s the word of ” justice “ chosen by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to qualify her reform, even though it is a question for everyone of working more – even if the difficult jobs always leave two years before the others. This is the controversy over the employment of seniors, first presented by certain members of the government as a mathematical consequence of postponing the age, before accompanying measures were mentioned to support the hiring of over 50 years.

This is the miss on the beneficiaries of the 1,200 euros minimum pension: Mr. Dussopt first said that forty thousand people would benefit from this revaluation, before rallying at the end of February to the range of ten thousand to twenty thousand verified by the socialist Jérôme Guedj. It is, finally, the allusive nature of the impact study of the reform on many points, starting with the “redistributive” aspects of the text: who will benefit from it and to what extent?

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