Emmanuel Macron has said he has heard the public’s anger over his contested pension reform which has sparked three months of protests but insisted once again the measure was necessary.
In a televised address late on Monday, the French president said he regretted no “common ground” could be reached over the legislation which raises the official retirement age from 62 to 64.
The measures “needed to guarantee everyone’s pension” will come into effect in stages from the autumn, he said.
He admitted increasing prices and certain jobs “don’t allow many French people to live well”, but insisted that “gradually working more means also producing more wealth for the whole nation”.
The recorded 15-minute broadcast on prime-time television was the first announcement Macron had made since signing the new bill into law on Saturday just hours after it had been approved by France’s highest court.
After the stick came the carrot: in an attempt to soothe the public mood, Macron promised a series of “concrete measures” to boost pay and careers, as well as improve the education, health and justice systems, to be announced within the next 100 days.
He called for “conciliation and unity”, an appeal addressed to the unions who have vowed to continue their protests.
If Macron was hoping his speech would calm a volatile public mood and reset his and the government’s image – both tarnished by the way the bill was passed – Laurent Berger, secretary general of France’s biggest union the CFDT and considered a moderate, suggested it had failed.
He said the president had offered “nothing concrete” and the demonstrations would continue with a national day of action on 1 May.
“Regret doesn’t change much for the workers who now have to work longer, many of whom have mobilised over the last three months and many of whom will do so on the 1st of May,” Berger told French television.
“We don’t need to hear that he has heard the anger but has now moved on from the question of pensions. He said nothing that showed consideration for the workers who are affected because they have to work two years more.”
Berger added: “We’re not in a poetry contest … it’s about acts and the acts over the last months have been unfair for those in the workforce. I don’t think what I have heard this evening is going to calm the anger.”
Protesters gathered around the country banging saucepans to suggest that if the president would not listen to them, they would make enough noise to drown him out.
Polls suggest around three-quarters of French people are opposed to the bill, which will also require workers to make increased contributions to obtain a full pension. Public fury intensified after the government was forced to push the legislation through parliament using a constitutional measure called the 49-3 that avoided a final vote in National Assembly.
The bill was then referred to France’s highest court, the constitutional council, which declared the process and the text were “not contrary to the constitution”.
Macron ignored pleas from opponents to delay signing it into law by promulgating it a few hours later, infuriating opponents. Union leaders accused the president of acting with indecent haste.
The president said nothing about the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, who he has instructed to negotiate with opposition parties to find some kind of working majority in the national assembly and to agree on a legislative timetable.
The indications are that she will fail, meaning political coalitions will have to be negotiated on a bill-by-bill basis, which will be complicated, slow the legislative timetable and water down Macron’s key election pledges.
Macron’s reelection programme included a labour law and legislation covering energy, the climate and immigration to be introduced to parliament before July, but now postponed. How and when these texts will be considered, and what will be in them, is not clear.
