“Building compromises is not denying yourself”, recalled Elisabeth Borne, this Wednesday, July 6, 2022. In front of an audience of deputies and senators, the Prime Minister, who presented her new government a few days earlier, gave his very first policy speech. This is a traditional test, which allows the executive to present its method, its ambition, its priorities to the elected officials of the Palais Bourbon and the Upper House. Generally, it ends in a vote of confidence in the government, but this time the power preferred not to submit to it, provoking the irascibility of part of the opposition. The elected representatives of the NUPES have thus tabled a motion of censure.
Without an absolute majority in the Assembly, Elisabeth Borne has no choice but to appeal to the votes emanating from the opposition even though, recalls The Huffington Post, she voluntarily dismisses La France Insoumise and the National Rally. This is why she took advantage of this speech to emphasize that it was possible “to assume the divisions, but refuse the postures”. “My government shares with you many priorities and solutions,” she added, reports France Info. Among which the famous “mother of reforms”: pension reform.
In all and for all, Elisabeth Borne is committed to three essential points of the reform to come. All of them, she explained to the deputies, will form the essence of the transformation planned by the executive and desired by the President of the Republic. This being the case, this does not mean that it will be impossible to debate the merits, she maintains.
The reform, thus affirmed the former Minister of Labor, “is not tied up”. “It will not be take it or leave it”, she further specified, as Notre Temps points out on its site.
Originally, let us remember, Emmanuel Macron wanted to put in place the gradual postponement of the legal retirement age. In the campaign, during the in-between rounds, he said he was ready to move from 65 to 64 years old. “We will arrive around 64 years old in 2027-2028”, he said then, as Ouest-France reminds us.
Elisabeth Borne did not give much more information about this. However, she still addressed the need to postpone the age. The French and the French, she explained, will have to “work gradually a little longer”. That being said, this does not mean that early departure arrangements will no longer exist.
The new model, she added, “will not be uniform” but will also have to “take into account long careers and arduous work”. It will also have to “ensure the continued employment of seniors”.
So only one point remains on which the government is not likely to compromise…
In the eyes of the government, the pension reform is absolutely essential… What Elisabeth Borne obviously did not fail to recall. “Our country needs a reform of its pension system,” she told all parliamentarians. Before recalling the first of the motivations likely to push the government to action: savings.
“It is essential to build new social progress”, underlined the former Minister of Labour, who also quotes “the prosperity of our country and the sustainability of our pay-as-you-go system”. It is therefore above all a question of freeing up a certain volume of financial resources…
