Pension reform, energy crisis or even overhaul of the health system: for his return, the President of the Republic will have to deal with several sensitive subjects.
A president already hard at work. From Fort Brégançon, in the Var, where he arrived on tuesdayEmmanuel Macron “follows the files” and “prepares for the start of the 2023 school year”. It promises to be busy and there will be no shortage of hot topics.
• The pension reform and the specter of an explosive social return
The government wants to extend the legal retirement age to 65. For the moment, the executive is groping and procrastinating on this subject. The President of the Republic, he wanted to go quickly. Pressed in particular by his ally François Bayrou, he nevertheless agreed to allow more time for consultation.
By abandoning the option of a reform by way of amendment in the social security financing bill (PLFSS) in the fall, the government has set course for a presentation of its project on 15 December. Then he changed his mind. From the Elysée, the head of state announced another postponement of the deadline, to January 10 this time. Evidence that the subject is highly sensitive. Official rationale:
This new calendar should allow “those who […] have just taken on responsibilities” – like Éric Ciotti, new president of Les Républicains or his counterpart at Europe-Écologie-Les-Verts, Marine Tondelier – of “discussing with the government” concerning “some key elements of the reform”.
The arrival of the holidays or the France-Morocco semi-final in the World Cup, scheduled for a day before the initial announcement of the reform, can also explain the movement of the executive. However, the ground for the start of the school year also looks very slippery.
With its reform, the government could – as during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term – face a major social movement while its reform is rejected by a majority of French people. Among the unions, even the CFDT, although perceived as a central reformist, is opposed to the extension of the legal retirement age.
The executive has no more success with the opposition. Unsurprisingly, the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) and the National Rally (RN) are up against its reform. More surprising and annoying for the relative majority: the LR deputies did not tune in on the subject, unlike their counterpart senators in favor of postponing the legal age to 64.
There remains for the government the option of 49.3 which it can use once per parliamentary session outside the budgetary texts.
• The energy crisis
The executive, after having left its reform warm during the holidays, is also betting on a better social context at the start of the school year. But nothing is less certain as gas and electricity prices will increase by up to 15% in January – the limit set by the tariff shield – and inflation remains at a high level (+6 .3% in December 2022 compared to last year).
Above all, Emmanuel Macron will have to deal with the threat of power cuts in January, due to the energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine. So far, the government has adopted a tone that juggles confidence and seriousness.
Objective: to reassure, while preparing the spirits. Even if it means showing hesitation about the communication to adopt. Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the government, has thus multiplied the formulas in the conditional. In early December, Emmanuel Macron came out of the woods to reassure the French.
Beforehand, the spokesperson for Enedis Laurent Méric had set fire to the powder, indicating on BFMTV that in the event of power cuts, people at high risk of life would not be “priority” and “possibly shedding”.
“Stop all that,” replied the President of the Republic. Before reframing: “The role of the government, of the ministers, of the operators, is to do their job to provide energy, that’s all”. While calling on these different actors not to “scare people with absurd scenarios”.
• The health system
Another project planned for January: the overhaul of the health system, to which Minister François Braun has committed. “I will have to announce the main lines of work on the restructuring of our health system, as a whole, both city medicine and hospital medicine”, he detailed from Annecy, in Haute-Savoie, whose hospital center he visited on Wednesday.
It is a question of “taking into account the arduousness and a certain number of problems raised by professionals in the field”, on the occasion in particular of the National Council of the refoundation devoted to health. Which took place between October and the end of 2022.
Already exhausted by three years of pandemic, hospital staff are currently facing a critical situation characterized by a triple epidemic of Covid-19, bronchiolitis and influenza. In addition to this, a strike by liberal doctors – to demand in particular a doubling of consultation rates – has been taking place since Monday. So many issues that François Braun will have to answer.
Apart from this project, Emmanuel Macron launched a citizens’ convention in September on the thorny issue of the end of life. In January, the participants in this system will get to the heart of the matter by examining ten “priority issues”. Before saying, in March, whether or not to change the current law, without guarantee of being followed, based on this question: “Is the end-of-life support framework adapted to the different situations encountered or should any changes be introduced?”.
