Pensions meeting fails: Prime Minister François Bayrou will speak this Thursday at 5 p.m.

This Thursday afternoon, June 26, François Bayrou will deliver the results of his last-ditch attempt to save the social partners' pension talks, following the failure of four months of "conclave" that has weakened his position as head of government.

The Prime Minister will hold a press conference at 5 p.m. at Matignon to "draw conclusions" from his discussions with trade unions and employers' organizations since Monday.

"Their work will not be forgotten." "And if there are still points of disagreement, the government will resolve them" and "take responsibility," François Bayrou, a great defender of social democracy for whom unions and employers were "just inches away" from a compromise, assured the Senate on Wednesday, June 25.

On Monday , after a final round of negotiations to improve the 2023 Borne Law, employers and unions had no choice but to acknowledge their failure . But François Bayrou felt that there was a "way forward" and began discussions himself.

During his press conference, he is expected to outline the sticking points and points of consensus noted by the social partners.

With the key promise that, if a possible agreement led to legislative provisions, "they would be submitted to Parliament" . Other measures could be regulatory and fall under the executive branch.

Senate President Gérard Larcher, who met with the Prime Minister on Wednesday afternoon, stated on TF1 this Thursday that "perhaps, when the time comes, he will propose a text" not on the legal retirement age, raised by the reform to 64, but on "the important issues related to professional wear and tear."

“Take (the) advances and turn them into law”

Unions and employers' organizations disagree on whether hardship should be taken into account when people retire.

The head of government wants to make progress on women who have had children , who could see their pension calculated more favourably, as well as on the retirement age without penalties, which could be brought forward to 66.5 years instead of 67 currently, according to government spokesperson Sophie Primas.

"Take (the) advances and turn them into law," declared the leader of the socialist senators, Patrick Kanner, on franceinfoTV.

But a compromise on these points would probably not be enough for all the socialists who want to be able to discuss "everything" in Parliament, and in particular the retirement age, something the Prime Minister refuses in the name of the regime's financial balance, while the country's debt continued to grow in the first quarter to stand at 114% of GDP, according to INSEE on Thursday.

"Raising the retirement age again will be a question of concern" in the coming years, Labour and Health Minister Catherine Vautrin insisted in Le Figaro on Wednesday.

François Bayrou had launched these consultations on this unpopular reform in exchange for the socialists' neutrality towards it, which allowed him to avoid censure on the budget last February.

But without waiting for the outcome of these last-minute discussions, the Socialists announced on Tuesday that they would submit a motion of censure against the government.

"Goodwill" of the National Rally

This puts the National Rally, which has the largest group in the National Assembly, back at the centre of the game, as with its predecessor Michel Barnier, who fell after three months under the combined votes of the Socialist Party, LFI and the National Rally.

François Bayrou can still breathe, however: the party with the flame will not censure him next week, when the PS motion is debated, and has given him a "date" for the budget in the autumn.

But if the left remains united to censor him after the summer, the centrist will find himself dependent on the Le Penists.

Can an agreement with the CFDT, a trade union close to the Socialist Party, help defuse the parliamentary battleground this autumn? "You should know that it is in your best interest to talk to Republicans in the broadest sense of the term (...) rather than possibly tying yourself to the goodwill of the National Rally. That cost your predecessor dearly," warned Patrick Kanner.

With his future hanging by a thread and his popularity at an all-time low in the polls, half of French people (52%) want the Bayrou government censured, and 63% consider him to be primarily responsible for the failure of the conclave, according to an Elabe survey published Wednesday.