A fine observer of French political life and a regular contributor to FigaroVox, Maxime Tandonnet notably published
André Tardieu.
The Misunderstood
(Perrin, 2019)
The leaders of LR keep repeating that they must be consistent with themselves.
During the last presidential elections of 2017 and 2022, the return to 65 years old was among the priorities of their candidate.
Therefore, the party, as a “party of government”, would be obliged to support the bill on the postponement to 64 of the retirement age.
However, it did not escape anyone that LR had failed in 2017 as in 2022, where its candidate suffered humiliation.
Certainly, the question of pensions is not the only one in question.
But what would prevent the LR right from questioning the content of a program, including on pensions, having contributed to leading it to two defeats in the presidential and legislative elections?
Read also“The real injustice: the retirees of tomorrow will be poor”
They also say: we defend the national interest.
But they are unable, like all the defenders of this reform, to demonstrate the objective interest of the transition to 64 years.
The number of annuities to receive a full pension is set at 43 years (a point which is little disputed by unions and employees).
The average age of first work is according to INSEE at 22.5 years.
Thus, in theory, the retirement age is rather 65.5 years for most employees.
But, in fact, the employment rate for people over 60 is extremely low, at less than 30%.
One of the effects of turning 64 will largely be to transform retirees into unemployed.
This pension reform has indeed taken on a symbolic dimension: that of the “democratic divide” between the ruling or influential circles and fiercely opposed public opinion.
Maxime Tandonnet
But above all, the only real impact expected from the age of 64 will concern people who worked before the age of 21 (and who will have to work more than 43 years to reach 64).
Therefore the measure is not only inefficient, but unfair because it targets workers with little education, especially manual professions.
And if the parliamentary work, with a view to fairness, results in completely neutralizing the impact of the reform for workers who started before the age of 21, the measure of “64 years” becomes an empty shell.
Does an empty shell deserve to plunge the country into turmoil if not paralysis?
Thus, the interest of this pension reform would be at best negligible in terms of its financial advantages, in view of the weight of the public debt of 3000 billion euros which has increased by 560 billion in two years under the effect of governmental "whatever it takes".
So his defenders of the LR right respond: any saving of public money from compulsory levies (or debt) is good to take, even minimal.
But why such a trade-off, which consists of making only the working classes (who worked before the age of 21) pay, moreover without the slightest guarantee that these possible savings will not be squandered by the pursuit of "whatever costs”?
So the LR line tells us: it's the "symbol" that counts.
This reform makes it possible to return to the image of the passage from 65 to 60 years decided by François Mitterrand in 1981. But still it would be necessary, to be honest, to take into account several reforms which have taken place since then, which extend the number of annuities necessary to receive a full pension.
Moreover, European comparisons on the age of retirement, held up like talismans by the champions of this reform, neglect to take into account the variable of the number of annuities which determines the age of retirement .
Similarly, in terms of international comparisons, it would be correct to point out that the retirement age in France, for people who have had choppy or belated careers,
Symbols, let's talk about them.
The conflict around the 64 years opposes, today, the political power and its allies to the immense majority of the working world.
According to several polls, 90% of employees reject it and a high percentage of French people support the new social movement.
This pension reform has indeed taken on a symbolic dimension: that of the “democratic fracture” between the ruling or influential circles which are embodied in macronism and public opinion, fiercely opposed.
That the LR right is rallying to the latter against a quasi-popular consensus is incomprehensible.
This choice of the LR staff only continues and completes the waves of rallying of the right to macronism in 2017 and 2022.
Maxime Tandonnet
France is a country that has suffered for at least a dozen years, a victim of terrorism, hit by the earthquake of "yellow vests", and two months of paralysis due to the social movement of 2019-2020, then the health crisis and in this time the war in Ukraine as well as inflation.
The two earthquakes - "yellow vests" and social crisis - were the responsibility of a political power whose lessons obviously do not benefit.
France is facing serious difficulties: deindustrialisation, which is expressed in the dizzying deficit of foreign trade, insecurity, poorly controlled immigration, unemployment, exclusion, poverty, the hospital crisis, the collapse of his educational level, etc.
It also suffers from the contempt of its ruling or influential class, obsessed with
The outbreak of a new storm, a new social earthquake - for a reform of more than doubtful scope - with the risks of violence and blockage, is incomprehensible.
And the support for the government of the right LR, yet elected as an opposition party, is even more so.
The truth, everyone knows it or perceives it.
The meaning of this reform is much more political than economic.
The project is emblematic of macronism, which sees it as the trophy for the double five-year term.
By rallying to it, the LR right, even if it fiercely denies it, gives the country the feeling of joining the presidential majority.
This choice of the LR staff only continues and completes the waves of rallying of the right to macronism in 2017 and 2022. The right LR chooses the presidential majority against the Nation, while this presidential majority s collapsed in unpopularity.
It reconstitutes in the Assembly, by corridor maneuvers, the absolute majority that the country clearly refused to the Head of State during the legislative elections of 2022. It thus leaves the monopoly of the
SEE ALSO
- Pensions: "The darling does not have to become a spoiled child", tackles Julien Aubert by evoking Aurélien Pradié