The general policy speech is a French parliamentary tradition, an opportunity for prime ministers to announce at the beginning of their mandate the main axes that will guide their action. Normally it has been a protocol procedure without much impact on the media, this year the intervention of François Bayrou, as was that of his predecessor Michel Barnier, was especially expected this Tuesday and had to respond to a central question: what allies he hopes to gain with his policy and whether, to attract the support of a part of the left, he is willing to suspend, repeal or modify the controversial pension reform approved by decree in 2023, which the right and the Macronists refuse to abandon.
The French Prime Minister has announced that he will open a limited negotiating process to review the reform that delayed the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years. “I have decided to reopen this debate with social actors for a short period of time and under conditions of transparency,” Bayrou announced on the stage of the National Assembly.
“I am going to entrust the Court of Auditors with an informative mission of a few weeks, which will offer us an image of the precise current state of the financing of the pension system,” he added. “We can seek a new path of reform, without totems or taboos. Not even the retirement age. “On condition that it meets the requirement that it does not allow the financial balance that we seek and on which almost all of us agree to deteriorate.”
Result of the French parliamentary fragmentation that has marked politics since the legislative elections in June, Bayrou’s continuity depends on the opposition parties since the prime minister needs, in the event of a motion of censure, the abstention of a majority of the Assembly . Unlike his predecessor, Michel Barnier, who barely spoke with the progressive forces and who concentrated (unsuccessfully) on ensuring the abstention of the extreme right, Bayrou is trying to achieve a minimum agreement between the bloc of center parties and the conservatives of Los Republicanos, to whom he hopes to add socialists, environmentalists and communists.
Last week, the socialists presented the prime minister with a document with 40 proposals, with the suspension or repeal of the pension reform – adopted in 2023 despite the rejection of the unions and the majority of French people – first. The problem for Bayrou is that both the Macronists and the right are strongly opposed to his suspension, and he cannot afford to lose any support. “Neither suspension nor repeal,” he warned on Saturday in Le Parisian the conservative president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher.
The formula chosen by Bayrou in his speech rules out the total annulment of the law, but keeps the rest of the possibilities open, and announces the establishment of a dialogue with the opposition on all aspects of the reform, including the minimum retirement age.
Another wink for the socialists has been the announcement of a possible reform of the electoral system, which includes a part of proportionality in the counting method. For Bayrou, “the voting system must take root in the territories” and that is why he declares himself a supporter “of the proportional principle for popular representation in our assemblies.”
‘Unsubmissive’ motion
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (LFI) party has announced that it intends to present a motion of censure immediately after Bayrou’s general policy speech.
However, for the moment, this motion does not raise great concern in the Government. The extreme right deputies – without whom censorship cannot prosper – have announced that “there will be no censorship a priori” for Executive Bayrou and that they will wait to hear the proposals on the budget.
Furthermore, Bayrou, who is also mayor of Pau, hopes to achieve the abstention of the non-LFI left (ecologists, socialists and communists) in this week’s motion. And open a negotiation with these parties regarding the budgets that must be presented next month. In particular, with the socialists who, with their 66 deputies, are in a decisive position.
Adding to the political complexity is the important limitation imposed by France’s financial situation, with the objective of reducing the deficit to around 5.4% of GDP by 2025 (in 2024 it was above 6%). “In all its history, France has never been as indebted as it is today. No recovery and reconstruction policy will be possible if this situation of excessive debt is not taken into account and if the objective is not set to contain and reduce it,” declared the prime minister.
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