{"id":217166,"date":"2025-10-16T07:02:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T07:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/217166\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T07:02:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T07:02:16","slug":"prime-minister-sebastien-lecornu-halts-changes-in-pension-age-to-save-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/217166\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu halts changes in pension age to save job"},"content":{"rendered":"

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National Rally, the right-wing party led by Marine Le Pen, has called on Macron to resign and allow a presidential election to end the instability, but Macron appears determined to hold on and hope the new government can survive.<\/p>\n

Lecornu and his ministers approved a draft budget in a meeting with Macron on Tuesday, and the president warned that any vote to bring down the government would lead him to dissolve the national assembly. This would trigger a vote on the assembly members, not the presidency.<\/p>\n

The pension age was due to increase from 62 to 64 in stages over the next few years, in a similar phased approach to Australia\u2019s increase in the pension age from 65 to 67, which took six years to take effect.<\/p>\n

France lifted its retirement age from 60 to 62 in 2010, but could not agree on another increase. Macron overcame that by lifting the age to 64 without a vote in the national assembly.<\/p>\n

Lecornu did not scrap the change but suspended it instead, and he said it would not apply before the presidential election due in 2027. This appears set to make it a key election issue for the candidates seeking to replace Macron, who must leave the post after two terms.<\/p>\n

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Australian National University professor Peter Whiteford estimated two years ago that public pension spending in France was 13.6 per cent of GDP, compared to 4 per cent in Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The arguments centre on ways to save money when the national government\u2019s debt has climbed to \u20ac3.3 trillion ($5.9 trillion), or about 114 per cent of gross domestic product, the third-highest level in the European Union after Greece and Italy. Lecornu is proposing more than \u20ac30 billion ($54 billion) in savings.<\/p>\n

\u2018Dramatic for France\u2019<\/p>\n

French economist Philippe Aghion, named one of the three winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics on Monday, said a path out of the budget mess was needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope there will be a compromise because the tragedy for France is to experience political instability,\u201d he told reporters in Paris prior to the suspension announcement.<\/p>\n

\"Waiting<\/p>\n

Waiting game: National Rally\u2019s Marine Le Pen is manoeuvring against Lecornu.Credit: AP<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is another censure, it would be dramatic for France. Our interest rates would continue to rise, our spread would continue to rise; it would be dramatic. We must absolutely avoid censure and still arrive at a budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

National Rally has lodged a motion in the national assembly to bring down Lecornu and his cabinet, which he named on Monday.<\/p>\n

The left-wing party La France Insoumise, also known as LFI or France Unbowed, also wants to remove the government.<\/p>\n

Lecornu has gained a chance to hang on to power, however, with Socialist parliamentary chief Boris Vallaud welcoming the change to the age pension.<\/p>\n

The Socialists and the Communists said they would not vote Lecornu out, while the Republicans sent a similar message.<\/p>\n

With Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loading National Rally, the right-wing party led by Marine Le Pen, has called on Macron to resign and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-217166","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\/217166","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=217166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}