"I would like the Senate to be able to enrich" the text on pension reform "with what it considers useful", Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday, three days before the examination of the bill by the upper house. “I saw (that) the Senate wanted to get things done on family policy and women's rights. I think that the government will approach (this debate) with openness and the will to engage in order to build a majority behind this text, "continued the head of state.
He further observed that the Senate, with a right-wing majority, had in the past "several times carried out reforms which were quite close to that of today". The text on the pension reform must be examined from Tuesday by the senators, ten days after heated debates in the Assembly which could not be completed.
In an interview with Le Parisien published on Saturday evening, the boss of the Les Républicains group in the upper house, Bruno Retailleau, indicated "wish to vote (the text), after having modified it", in particular in order to "not increase the deficits, but manage to fill them".
"We intend to offer the government two options: either a 5% premium for mothers who have reached both a full career and the legal age, or an early departure at 63," said leader LR in the Senate, also evoking the idea of an "end-of-career contract which would be exempt from family contributions" for employees aged 60 and over.
The President of the Republic, who was speaking on the sidelines of a visit to the Paris Agricultural Show, put an end to the media discretion observed since the beginning of the debates on the reform. On the contrary, he defended his project at length, all day Saturday, to the many onlookers who questioned him on the subject, sometimes in a lively way. "I did not find anger among our compatriots," he said, however, saying he perceived "concern".
"That's also what comes out in the pension protests: when you listen to people, it's not the pension, the subject. It's the work and the working conditions," continued Emmanuel Macron, saying that "a lot of people who protest, it's the prospect of their career, it's 'does my job pay me enough or not ?" ". "There's a sense of injustice," he said.
