Very weakened by the pension reform, Elisabeth Borne hopes to get out of this crisis through “dialogue”. The Prime Minister receives the inter-union, then the main representatives of the right this Wednesday. But she has no intention of withdrawing her reform or touching on the postponement of the legal age. Part of his fate could depend on the success of these interviews.
This Wednesday, Elisabeth Borne arrives at the momentum of her consultations which began a few days ago, in the hope of “expanding” the majority of the presidential camp and “appease the country”. The Prime Minister receives not only the inter-union but also the leaders of the Les Républicains (LR) party, a natural ally who is not really one, as the formation led by Éric Ciotti has appeared divided recently.
For the head of government, this day has everything of a trial by fire. Very damaged politically by an unpopular reform and adopted without a vote of the deputies with 49.3, the head of government is looking for a way out of the crisis.
Unions put pressure
For the past few days, she has been the champion of “dialogue”. A not new refrain, for the one who only has a relative majority in the National Assembly. But the song lived, after a sequence where the oppositions never ceased to denounce the “forceful passages” of the executive. Widely disputed, is Elisabeth Borne still capable of governing?
The unions put pressure on him. Certainly, all will be present this Wednesday at 10 a.m. and the former Minister of Transport was delighted. However, the discussions could be cut short. Even though the two sides will meet for the first time in months, the tectonic plates are not moving.
The inter-union wants, according to its various representatives, a minimum “pause” of the reform, or an outright withdrawal. Élisabeth Borne, she wants to project herself and address many themes such as “quality of life at work”, “prevention of hardship” or “ends of careers”.
An appointment that could be “very fast”
If the Prime Minister says she is “listening to all subjects” and therefore to the text on pensions, she showed firmness this Friday, declaring:
“There is a bill which is being examined before the Constitutional Council (which will give its opinion on April 14, editor’s note). We cannot take a break when we have a bill which has been voted on, which is under review”.
The executive procrastinates. He hopes for a green light from the Elders so that their text gains legitimacy. But the power stations intend not to let him have full control of the agenda. If there is no question of 64 years during the meeting at Matignon, “we will leave”, warned Laurent Berger, boss of the CFDT.
Sophie Binet, his new CGT counterpart since last Friday, is even more categorical. Unless there is a decision to withdraw the text, the “meeting is likely to be very quick”, she assures. Such a scenario could further weaken the Prime Minister.
How to reach agreements with the “60 autoentrepreneurs of LR”?
For her, the equation is not limited to unions. Resuming language with them will not be enough. Elisabeth Borne also faces a political question: how to reach an agreement with the opposition to pass these texts? Or, to put it another way, how not to repeat the fiasco of the pensions with a government which multiplied the concessions to the LRs without succeeding in gathering the support of the whole of this group?
The right, precisely, will go to Matignon at 7 p.m. Are expected: Éric Ciotti, president of the party, Olivier Marleix, leader of the group of LR deputies, and Bruno Retailleau, boss of LR senators. All had topped with Elisabeth Borne on the pension reform, but they failed to unite the group of deputies, whose members are sometimes described as “60 autoentrepreneurs”.
The party of the rue de Vaugirard has already warned: it does not wish to ally itself with the majority. “This question does not arise”, declared Éric Ciotti recently in Le Figaro, warning that “any individual poaching will contribute to a radicalization of positions”.
Same story with Gérard Larcher, President LR of the Senate, who advocated on LCI a “line which remains independent”, while indicating that his people can work “around successive texts” with the government.
In this configuration, the right could weigh all its weight on the bills of the executive. But he will have to avoid the “poison of the division”, to use the words of Éric Ciotti.
Clément Beaune wants to “work” with “the moderate left”
Within the presidential camp, some invite to look on the other side of the hemicycle. In an interview at ReleaseClément Beaune asks the majority “not to lock themselves into a dialogue with Les Républicains, calling on the “moderate left” to “get out of the clutches of Jean-Luc Mélenchon” and to “work” with the government.
The Minister of Transport thus distinguishes La France insoumise (LFI) and the New Popular Ecologist and Social Union (Nupes), of which the other leftist formations also belong.
For him, an outstretched hand towards his parliamentarians is all the more necessary since LR is “not a stable political force”. Clément Beaune, who has never described the entire Nupes as “extreme left”, unlike some of his colleagues, recalls that agreements have been reached with certain groups of the alliance.
He takes recent examples such as the nuclear law, “passed by the Communists”, and the renewable energy law, “passed by the Socialists”.
But here too, the case will be far from simple for Elisabeth Borne, as she pointed her opposition during the pension reform. For her, it’s double or quits. Failure to succeed in dialogue with the unions, to find points of agreement with the opposition, its ability to govern will be clearly tainted. And his destiny could then be written far from Matignon.
