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Pensions: "LR has chosen to line up behind the presidential majority, against peripheral France"

2023-01-13T13:44:28.589Z


FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE. - By supporting the pension reform, the Republicans are making a gift to the government, believes the essayist Maxime Tandonnet, who, according to him, risks being perceived by part of the electorate as an abandonment of France far from the metropolises.


A keen observer of French political life and columnist for FigaroVox, Maxime Tandonnet has notably published

André Tardieu.

The misunderstood

(Perrin, 2019) and

Georges Bidault: from the Resistance to French Algeria

(Perrin, 2022).

The argument given by the LR right to support the pension reform is that postponing retirement to 64 is one of its old recommendations.

In fact, the President of the Republic and his majority do not have the same qualms about changing their minds.

During the aborted 2020 pension reform project, they categorically ruled out an extension of the retirement age, qualified at the time as “hypocrisy”.

So why 64 today?

It is a political response to President Macron's campaign promise to raise the retirement age to 65, the aim of which was to pull the rug out from under candidate LR.

This choice is above all political.

It aims to show the occupant of the Élysée as a reformer, to give content to his assessment in the perspective of 2027 and the election of his successor.

Admittedly, there is no lack of common sense arguments in favor of the 64-year-olds: longer life expectancy, lower ratio of retirees to contributors, need to make up for the deficits.

However, it is absolutely false to claim that this two-year postponement of the starting age constitutes some sort of miracle cure or unique and inevitable solution.

Read also Pensions: the executive must also convince its allies

Will it eventually make it possible to reduce the deficits and the weight of the public debt?

Before knowing the details of the project, there was talk of 33 billion euros in savings by 2035, or 10 billion euros per year depending on the expertise.

However, what do 10 billion euros of savings per year weigh alongside an annual budget deficit of 180 billion euros, a public debt of 3000 billion euros which has increased by 560 billion euros in two years (2020-2021)?

Certainly, any savings are good to take, but at what price and above all, for what purpose, if, in parallel, the pursuit of "whatever the cost" is manifested by the distribution of checks largely covering the savings expected from the reform?

Not only does LR support this reform, but it claims its inspiration.

Maxime Tandonnet

Moreover, the 64 years are not enough in any way to settle one of the essential questions which is the deficit of the retirement plan of the public service: 30 billion euros per year.

Similarly, the low employment rate of the over 60s (35.5% according to INSEE) obviously limits its scope.

The French would work

"less than the others"

according to the official discourse and European comparisons of the official retirement age.

However, the 43 years of compulsory contribution provided for in France, for an average age of first employment over 22 years according to INSEE, obviously allow us to approach the objectives of postponing the retirement age. retired without waving the red rag.

The unions denounce the inequitable impact of the 64 years.

Indeed, the category most affected by the postponement of the retirement age would be, according to them, the middle class entering the labor market before the age of 21 (and after 18, given the specific measures for employees who started before this age).

Those will have to work beyond 43 years before reaching 64 to receive their pension.

We thus fall back on the traditional fracture, at the source of most social crises, between the bourgeoisie and peripheral France.

So, if this reform, which is not vital (despite undeniable arguments of common sense) and questionable in certain aspects, is fundamentally of a political nature, why such a gift from LR to the Élysée and to the presidential majority?

Better :

not only does LR support this reform but it claims its inspiration.

It is as if, with undeniable political skill, the majority had succeeded in the tour de force of making LR shoulder part of the responsibility for the reform.

The understandable objective of LR is to present itself as a “responsible party”, as a “party of government”.

However, since this reform is intended to be emblematic of a five-year term, the support of LR will inevitably be felt by the public as a rallying to the presidential majority, in the continuity of the multiple opportunist defections which have weakened this party since 2017. Public opinion, rightly or wrongly, will see it as a de facto government agreement – ​​which LR claimed not to want.

However, the flagship measure of this reform, the 64 years, is extremely unpopular.

A survey shows a level of rejection of 79% of the French, which is absolutely considerable.

Can we reform against four-fifths of the French, against such a popular consensus?

Through political maneuvers behind the scenes, they reconstitute the absolute majority that the people clearly and without the slightest ambiguity refused to President Macron during the legislative elections.

Maxime Tandonnet

By deciding to support it, LR gives (even without wanting to) the feeling of choosing the camp of the privileged elites, alongside the presidential majority, against peripheral France.

Thus, the right seems to be turning its back on its popular vocation.

The unpopularity of this measure and union anger announce a large-scale social movement.

In the standoff that is preparing, LR will be in the camp of power against the people.

Is this what he was looking for?

And if the government is forced to back down through strikes and the streets, LR will find itself on the losing side.

So certainly, the party will pride itself on having chosen “seriousness and responsibility” against “populism”.

But in this case, he offers an incredible gift, not only to the Elysée, but also, and even more, to the National Rally by granting it the monopoly of the popular opposition on the right.

France is a country traumatized by ten years of serious unrest: the terrorist wave, the yellow vests crisis, the social movement which paralyzed the country for two months following the 2020 pension reform project, then the epidemic of Covid-19 and the shipwreck in bureaucratic Absurdistan, the war in Ukraine and the vertiginous inflation that is ruining its SME fabric.

Read alsoPension reform: the left invigorated, the right relieved

In an anxiety-provoking if not tragic context, it is entering into a new serious shock, of questionable usefulness, partly linked to the interests of political postures.

The victims of the coming movement are known in advance: small businesses, shops, transport, crafts, restaurants, etc.

And beyond that the French economy.

After the Yellow Vests (caused by the carbon tax) and the social movement of 2020, the lessons were therefore not enough.

The voters of 2022 voted LR in opposition to the Macron presidency (otherwise they would have voted for Together).

By rallying in fact to the majority on such an emblematic subject, the LR deputies are turning their backs on part of their electorate.

Through political maneuvers behind the scenes,

they reconstitute the absolute majority that the people clearly and without the slightest ambiguity refused to President Macron during the legislative elections.

Basically, the other victim of this bad comedy is democracy.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-01-13

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