France’s embattled prime minister says he backs suspending a pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election in a bid to end the political turmoil that has gripped the country for months.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, 39, announced on Tuesday that he supports pausing an unpopular reform that raised the age of retirement from 62 to 64 in the hopes of securing enough votes to survive two no-confidence votes.
“I will propose to parliament this autumn that we suspend the 2023 pension reform until the presidential election. There will be no increase in the retirement age from now until January 2028,” he promised lawmakers during his policy speech, responding to a key request from the Socialists, a swing group in parliament crucial to his cabinet’s survival.
President Emmanuel Macron signed into law the bill to raise the retirement age, a signature economic reform that became the biggest domestic challenge of Macron’s second mandate as he faced widespread popular opposition to the changes and also sliding personal popularity.
Hundreds of thousands protested against the change in 2023 in towns and cities across the country.
Lecornu has faced an uphill battle since being appointed prime minister in early September. At the time of his appointment, he was the fifth prime minister in less than two years and faced deep political divides and a high debt load.
He ultimately stepped down from the post in early October, further deepening the country’s long-running political crisis. Macron then reappointed Lecornu as prime minister last week.
Lecornu faces two no-confidence motions by the hard-left France Unbowed and far-right National Rally parties. The two parties do not hold enough seats to topple Lecornu’s government on their own, but the prime minister could be ousted if the Socialist Party were to join forces with them.
The leader of the Socialists in the National Assembly said the decision to suspend the pension reform was a victory for the left.
Boris Vallaud did not explicitly say if his party would vote against the two motions of no confidence this week, but he said he believed in parliamentary debate and he would be ensuring the prime minister’s pledges be turned into actions.
Cyrielle Chatelain confirmed on Tuesday that France’s Greens party will support a no-confidence motion.
Earlier on Tuesday, Macron had warned that any vote to topple Lecornu’s cabinet would force him to dissolve parliament and call elections.
France, the eurozone’s second largest economy, is facing deep economic turmoil as Lecornu fights to keep his cabinet alive long enough to pass an austerity budget by the end of the year. During a speech on Thursday, he warned suspending the pension reform would cost about 400 million euros ($464m) in 2026 and 1.8 billion euros ($2.1bn) the year after and it should be offset by savings.
France’s ratio of debt to its gross domestic product is the European Union’s third highest after Greece and Italy and is close to twice the 60-percent limit fixed by EU rules.
France has been rocked by protests in recent months. In September, the Block Everything campaign spurred a nationwide wave of antigovernment protests that filled streets with burning barricades and tear gas as demonstrators rallied against budget cuts and political instability.
In October, about 195,000 people, including 24,000 in Paris, turned out for another day of nationwide strikes at the urging of French trade unions. The protests were triggered by widespread opposition to an austerity budget that the government has been trying to push through parliament.
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