Pension reform: the difficult succession of Jean-Paul Delevoye

His departure comes at the worst time for the executive. The resignation of Jean-Paul Delevoye, Monday, December 16, embarrassed Emmanuel Macron and Édouard Philippe on the eve of a new day of mobilization against the pension reform - mobilization which promises to be massive.

After the Prime Minister announced the details of the reform project on December 11, the CFDT and Unsa announced that they were joining the challenge. For the first time since the start of the 12-day-long conflict, the CFDT will thus be present at the demonstrations planned for Tuesday, thus displaying on the street a united trade union front which has not been seen since 2010.

>> Read: Jean-Paul Delevoye, High Commissioner for Pensions, resigns

In this context, the departure of the "Monsieur Retraites" from the government is "a mess", deplores a parliamentarian of the majority, who considers that this kind of setback "always falls badly, but even more this week which can be decisive in the arm between the government and the unions. "

The Élysée Palace has announced that Jean-Paul Delevoye will be replaced "as soon as possible". But everyone knows in government that it will be very difficult to find a successor. Surrounded by a "dream team", as he called his team, the affable former Mediator of the Republic was appreciated by the trade unionists, seduced, like Dominique Corona (Unsa), by "a very rounded character, very affordable, who respects the people in front of him. "

A successor with "the same technical knowledge" of the pension file

"He is a man of dialogue. He carried with a conviction that we cannot blame him for the government project", reacted the secretary general of Force Ouvrière (FO), Yves Veyrier, on LCI.

The boss of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, meanwhile stressed that "the consultation with him was fair, there was a confrontation of intelligent ideas, to try to get things done". "He never caught us in traitors," he said on France Info. "Basically, (...) he knows the subject very well, he is the one who knows best the positions of the various interlocutors," added Laurent Berger.

>> Read: The reasons for the mobilization against the pension reform

For his part, Laurent Escure (Unsa), also on LCI, said "hope" that the successor to Jean-Paul Delevoye "has the same technical knowledge and the same respect for the social partners".

This is where the main problem of the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister resides: pension reform is an eminently technical issue that requires knowing its various parameters at the tip of your fingers. Some ministers or parliamentarians have thus got their feet in the carpet while trying to do pedagogy, like the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud, on December 14 on BFM TV, including defending the pension system at points was more than painstaking.

Muriel Pénicaud explains the reform of #retraites. Convincing isn't it? And clear, above all. 😳 pic.twitter.com/vspQeMjcce

Jean-Paul Delevoye was appointed in September 2017 high commissioner for pension reform and entered the government two years later, after eighteen months of consultations with the social partners. A succession of revelations concerning omissions in his declaration of interests to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) ended up pushing him to resign. This makes him the 7th minister to resign for ethical reasons since the arrival of Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée in spring 2017.

With AFP

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