Pension reform in France: "This text will continue its democratic path", Macron challenged

French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to continue with the disputed retirement reform, which he hopes to implement before the end of the year.

from him, this Wednesday at noon.

Macron spoke in an interview he gave to the two main channels in France, when the country is in a

because the reform was not voted on in Parliament, but was approved by application of article 49.3 of the Constitution, a form of decree.

The head of state

for the battered Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who remains in power but is badly hurt after the application of the reform and getting only nine votes so as not to fall.

Macron is “going to industrialize France by 2030” and to get the new reforms, he must “broaden most of it”.

Striking employees watch President Macron on TV.

Photo: AP

“This text will continue on its democratic path,” said the president in his first response to the two journalists in the studio at the Elysee.

Now the text is in the Constitutional Council and we must wait for it to rule on its legality.

It must enter into force at the end of the year according to the head of state, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

“

.

We are a great nation and an old people.

There is a legitimacy that exists:

.

The right to demonstrate is guaranteed by the Constitution.

When groups use extreme violence to attack the chosen ones, without rules because they are not happy, these are not the Republic.

These are clarifying concepts,” he said.

"This reform does not give me pleasure"

“Do you think that it gives me pleasure to do this reform?

No. But I regret not having been able to share the need to do it,” Macron declared.

“As I talk to you, do you think it makes me happy to do so?

No ”, he continued, questioned about the advisability of wanting to reform pensions.

"This reform

," added the president, assuring that

Sanitation employees listen to Macron.

Photo: AP

“ This reform

.

for the country, he clarified."Between the polls and the interest of the country, I choose the interest of the country," she assured.

"Neither the factions nor the factions," he said.

Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that “people are angry, but there are also things that are working.

We cannot only look at what is not working”, said the president.

"Violence must be condemned"

With France paralyzed by the garbage collectors' strike, the blockades, the lack of fuel and the threat of a general strike, the head of state

“If there are demonstrations to say that they are against, they are legitimate.

I respect them.

On the side there are blockades and violence.

.

And the blockades must be removed when they prevent normal activity, ”she clarified.

Violence must be condemned, Macron said.

Photo: AP

Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, the president announced in 35 minutes that

and will summon the unions because "France must

“Never the

(minimum wage workers)

they had seen their purchasing power increase so much in recent years”, declared the head of state while inflation deals a very hard blow to the portfolios of the most modest.

Exponential income tax

The president announced "an exceptional contribution" on "exceptional profits", which "will not be" a super profit tax.

Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, the president announced in 35 minutes that the reforms will continue.

Photo: Ludovic Marin / AFP

Emmanuel Macron cited the large groups, which manage to "repurchase their own shares" thanks to their profits.

, said the head of state.

Faced with social discontent and in great political difficulty, the president said he was "willing to

."

"Between the ballot box, the short term and the general interest of the country, I choose the general interest," he argued.

Faced with retirement at 64 in France, the president "regrets that no union force has proposed a compromise."

The centrals have presented a united front since the beginning of the mobilization, a phenomenon without precedent since 2010.

"Resume Dialogue"

The Head of State regretted that "some" "want to abstract from the principle of reality", in reference to the issue of the deficit.

Emmanuel Macron regrets that "the project of all oppositions" to the pension reform "is the deficit".

"We cannot accept the rebels or the factions," he replied when asked about the tensions during the spontaneous demonstrations in recent days.

"We cannot accept either the rebels or the factions," Macron said when asked about the protests.

Photo: AP

“Even in the political incandescence, there is no alternative majority,” said the president.

Faced with the anger of the unions, the president called to "resume dialogue" on working conditions.

Opposition criticism

A

occurred among politicians and union leaders after Emmanuel Macron's speech.

Reacting to the presidential interview, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing group France Insoumise and NUPES, spoke of "the

to which we are accustomed" during a press conference.

A great disappointment occurred among politicians and union leaders after Emmanuel Macron's speech.

Photo: Ludovic Marin/ AFP

"Denial and Lie!"

 In a tweet, Laurent Berger, the moderate union leader leading the protests, accused Emmanuel Macron of "lying about the CFDT's position" on pensions to "hide his inability to find a majority to vote for his unfair reform

"

“The CFDT has a pension reform project.

Macron in 2019 had understood it.

He had assumed our ambition for a universal system, ”added the union leader.

“The people, who express themselves through their elected representatives, are the ones who chose you as a bulwark against the extreme right.

The one who did not give you a mandate for this reform, the one who did not give you a majority in the National Assembly”, also recalled Rémi Cardon, a socialist senator.

A large majority of the population, including Emmanuel Macron's voters in the second round of the presidential elections,

according to the latest Elabe polls for BFMTV.

"Don't insult the French people with every defiant speech," ironically Louis Boyard, LFI deputy for Val-de-Marne.

"We have known since Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract that

. Elected officials do not possess it. People who demonstrate must be listened to and respected. Let Macron start by not calling it a 'crowd,'" he wrote. Clementine Autain.

This is how he called them contemptuously in the interview and in front of his deputies, saying that popular power has been delegated to the elected.

On the right and extreme right, few parliamentarians had reacted to Emmanuel Macron's statements.

“How many voted for Macron to block?

How many voted against and not in favor of Macron?

Remember this scam well in the next elections ”, put the RN MEP, Virginie Joron, on her Twitter account.

"In the Élysée there is a pyrotechnician who walks over the barrels of gunpowder with a torch," reacted the first secretary of the socialist party, Olivier Faure.

On Thursday

organized by the unions against the pension reform.

The threat is the general strike.

Paris, correspondent

ap

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Pension reform in France: they ask for the resignation of Prime Minister Borne and the strikes and protests continue