Speaking on BFM TV, Laurent Jacobelli, a lawmaker and spokesman for the far-right National Rally party, said his party supported the bill. [National Rally’s] program.”
Mathilde Pannot of France Unboud said she was confident the bill would pass. “In the last parliament there was already a majority that rejected the retirement age at 64, but I think today there will be an even larger majority that will reject it,” she said. Speaking at France Inter.
After weeks of street protests and fierce debate in parliament, Macron’s government passed the law last year using a controversial constitutional maneuver that skipped a parliamentary vote, plunging the country into political crisis.
Despite opposition, Macron has maintained that pension reform is necessary to balance France’s finances in the long term as it faces an ageing society. France suffers from high levels of public debt and was downgraded by S&P in May. Moody’s has warned it could do so again if France fails to get its finances in order. Pension reform is overturned.
Both parties had pledged to reverse the pension reforms in this summer’s general election, but the far left and far right despise each other and are unlikely to cooperate – even if failing to do so would mean a victory for the centrist Macron.
But parties opposed to Macron’s pension reforms are much stronger in the National Assembly, increasing the likelihood of a bill to reverse the reforms being passed.
The National Alliance and its allies have 142 deputies, while the far-left coalition has 188, giving the two parties a combined majority in parliament of more than half. Reversing the pension reform was one of the election pledges of the left-wing New Popular Front. and some of the far-left coalition government partners. There is already support for the initiative in Congress.
But Macron’s opponents face many obstacles: The National Assembly is currently in recess and the pensions bill is unlikely to be debated for several months, and the center-right-controlled Senate is also unlikely to pass a bill to overturn the pension reforms.
