Pensions: Macron says he’s ready to meet union to ‘move forward’ on certain issues

He renews the invitation made this Wednesday during his TV interview. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday he was “at the disposal of the inter-union” after the Constitutional Council makes its decision on pension reform.

There is no talk of withdrawing the text, but the head of state says that he is ready to think about various measures related to the reform. “I pointed to our willingness to move forward on issues such as depreciation, retirement, retraining, career development, working conditions, wages in certain industries,” he said at a press conference in Brussels.

“So I am at the disposal of the intersyndical if they want to come and meet with me to make progress on all these subjects. As for the rest and the pension reform, it is under consideration by the Constitutional Council, and it is obvious that we will wait for the decision of the Constitutional Council.” But “the country cannot stand still,” “we continue to move forward,” Emmanuel Macron also said.

Discussions in the coming weeks

In a TV interview on Wednesday, the president already mentioned the possibility of “resuming” dialogue with social partners about working conditions to hear the “need for fairness” expressed in demonstrations against his pension reform.

He then promised that the discussion would be held “in the coming weeks” in a “method” defined as “three weeks to one month” and would take the form not of “big masses” but of “concrete discussions.”

It remains to be seen whether the trade unions will seize this newly outstretched hand. During the same interview on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron angered his opponents by saying that the unions had not presented a “compromise proposal” on the text of the reform.

The statements were called “denial” and “lies” by CFDT boss Laurent Berger, while his CGT colleague Philippe Martinez denounced “feit and contempt for millions of demonstrators”.