{"id":197379,"date":"2025-10-08T09:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/197379\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T09:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:09:09","slug":"french-pm-floats-pension-climbdown-to-court-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/197379\/","title":{"rendered":"French PM floats pension climbdown to court left"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

S\u00e9bastien Lecornu has suggested suspending Emmanuel Macron\u2019s emblematic pension reforms in talks with France\u2019s leftwing opposition, as the outgoing prime minister seeks a way through France\u2019s political crisis.<\/p>\n

Pausing Macron\u2019s reforms to raise the retirement age to 64 would be a major concession to the left that could avoid new parliamentary elections but only by sacrificing a central pillar of Macron\u2019s economic reforms.<\/p>\n

It also risks further alienating the rightwing R\u00e9publicains, who want to see France<\/a>\u2019s rising debt levels taken in hand. French bonds and stocks have already sold off this week in reaction to the political uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Outgoing finance minister Roland Lescure told France Inter on Wednesday that the suspension of pension reforms was one of the measures being assessed to pass a budget<\/a> but that the move would need to be financed by other means. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn today\u2019s situation and given the urgency, there are ways of moving forward, but\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009changing the pension reform would cost hundreds of millions in 2026, and billions in 2027,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The reforms to progressively raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 were passed in 2023, but a suspension would stop the gradual increases. The measures were bitterly opposed by opposition parties and unions and sparked major protests.<\/p>\n

Former prime minister \u00c9lisabeth Borne, who introduced the reforms to parliament and is now the outgoing education minister, told Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday night the law should not be considered a \u201ctotem\u201d in efforts to find a way out of the crisis.<\/p>\n

Lecornu, who resigned on Monday after less than a month in post, has been tasked by Emmanuel Macron<\/a> with leading final discussions to explore whether compromise to pass a 2026 budget can be sought in the country\u2019s divided parliament. He will deliver a speech on Wednesday morning, the prime minister\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

The overtures have been welcomed by the left, with Raphael Glucksmann, a leading centre-left politician and member of the European parliament, saying on Tuesday night that \u201cthere is a route to obtaining this suspension: our demand is not unattainable\u201d. <\/p>\n

Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist party, said that the move would be an \u201cimportant gesture if it came to pass\u201d but that he \u201cwanted to know if this victory is real or not\u201d before celebrating it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to check that this isn\u2019t simply a smokescreen,\u201d he said on FranceInfo on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Sebastien<\/a><\/p>\n

Scaling back Macron\u2019s pension reform has been a key demand of the left and the far right but it is still unclear whether a budget including the measure would win sufficient support in France\u2019s fractured National Assembly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prospect has been rejected by the conservative Les R\u00e9publicains party, with Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse, a senior member of the party and president of the \u00cele-de-France region. She said the move would \u201clet the deficits of the pensions system explode\u201d and put the burden on the next generation.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s borrowing rates have already increased in the past month since the previous Bayrou administration fell in a confidence vote on deficit reduction measures for next year\u2019s budget. <\/p>\n

Rating agency Fitch, which was the first to downgrade France\u2019s sovereign debt last month, warned that \u201cfailure to implement fiscal consolidation measures\u201d could leave the country facing further credit downgrades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-197379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}