The challenge seems complex for the new President of the Les Républicains party, while LR deputies remain, for the time being, divided on the question.
by Mattias Corrasco
“This is our first meeting of the week … well, indeed we are only Monday [December 19]”, quips Stéphane Viry, deputy (Les Républicains, LR) of the Vosges. Three meetings to discuss the thorny file of the pension reform had already been organized the previous week. This is to say how much the subject struggles to find a consensual outcome on the right, while, on January 10, 2023, the date on which Elisabeth Borne will present the bill, approach. But a few days before his first meeting, as president of LR, with the head of the government, scheduled for Wednesday, December 21, Eric Ciotti would have found his parade.
According to several sources, the new boss of the right party calls for amending the text of the government, by proposing the postponement of the legal retirement to 63 years by 2027, with the prospect of gradually shifting it At 64 years old in 2031. “He proposed a kind of synthesis between the postponement of legal age and the increase in the duration of contribution, with a kind of right of option, blows one of the participants in the meeting From Monday. He also warned of the divisions within the group. “If talking about consensus is a bit exaggerated, the outcome of this fourth meeting in less than seven days has the merit of being” enthusiastic “.
Because the positions have multiplied within the parliamentary group. Like the president of the LR group in the National Assembly, Olivier Marleix, the deputy of Savoie Emilie Bonnivard pleads for a retirement at 63 years in 2027 and an extension of the hours worked and contributed. “Better a retirement that we can make,” she argues. Aurélien Pradié, deputy for the Lot and unhappy candidate at the head of LR, proposes, meanwhile, to take into account only the duration of contributions, “to bypass the existing debate on the legal age”. Others, more marginal, like the elected official of the Aisne Julien Dive, defend a “status quo”: “the pension reform is not an emergency,” he said. And to add disagreement, at the Luxembourg Palace, the Senators of LR – which adopted in November the gradual postponement of departure to 64 years, as well as the acceleration of the lengthening of the contribution duration – camp on their positions.
“Macron trap”
The other unhappy candidate for the presidency of the party, Bruno Retailleau, puts pressure on Mr. Ciotti. The leader of the Senators LR estimated, Tuesday, December 20, that his training would take the risk of “discrediting itself” if it did not vote for the postponement of the legal retirement age desired by the government. The pension reform is “an essential issue for the country, but it is also a test of truth for the right (…). Are we going to defend what we have always defended? Or are we going to slip into the Moving sands of denial? “Asked the elected official of Vendée in a gallery at Le Figaro . Rejecting a simple extension of the contribution duration, which according to him would sacrifice the purchasing power of retirees, he sees in a postponement of age “the fairest choice”.
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