PARIS — France’s Socialists scored a win this week by forcing the government to backtrack on its unpopular pensions reform — but they are still bracing for disappointment.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has hinted that a freeze on the 2023 retirement-age reform, a concession which spared his government from an immediate collapse, could be tacked on to the approval of something the Socialists don’t really like: the social security budget, which includes spending cuts.
“There are a lot of things that aren’t OK” in the social security budget, a Socialist MP, granted anonymity to discuss party strategy, told POLITICO. “So what are we going to do in the end? Vote in favor or against?”
The social security budget would likely need votes from the Socialists, whose 69 lawmakers hold the balance of power in France’s National Assembly, to pass. If the parliament fails to adopt a budget, it will allow the government to legislate via executive action. This would effectively give Lecornu the power to force through the government’s agenda regardless.
The Socialist’s parliamentary leader, Boris Vallaud, conceded that the party was taking a “risky bet” by trusting the prime minister to keep his word on freezing the pension reform.
Other opposition parties quickly questioned how serious the government was about the announcement.
“All of this feels like a mix of improvisation — and maybe a bit of a swindle,” said the head of the French National Assembly’s finance committee, Eric Coquerel, a prominent lawmaker for the hard-left France Unbowed group.
The reform involves raising the minimum retirement age by three months each year until 2030. The government’s current proposal is to pause the increase at 62 years and nine months until January 2028, which is after the next presidential election.
Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appeared to give tacit approval to Lecornu to freeze the reform, which has come to define his embattled second term in office.
The 2023 reform was pushed through parliament without a vote using a constitutional backdoor, despite being rejected by an overwhelming majority of the population and sparking months of mass protests across the country. Macron had always sold the law as vital to ensure the French pensions system’s solvency.
Lecornu estimated that freezing the reform would cost €400 million in 2026 and said any loss must be offset with savings to rein in public spending.
“What’s been said since [Tuesday] leads the population to believe that the freeze has been decided,” Paul Christophe, head of the Macron-allied Horizons group in parliament, said Wednesday. “We must be careful, as long as parliament hasn’t voted, the suspension doesn’t exist.”
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