Paris (AFP)

After two days of discussions in Matignon with the social partners, Edouard Philippe said Thursday that "progress has been made" on pension reform, but the unions have deemed these "openings" insufficient, that they demand the withdrawal of " equilibrium age "or of the project as a whole.

For the Prime Minister, this new round of concertation was not in vain. "Progress has been made, projects have been opened, disagreements persist but we are determined to overcome them," he said after a two-hour round table with union and business leaders.

He thus promised a "more generous" consideration of arduousness, by playing on the thresholds of night work (110 nights per year instead of 120 today) or in "three-eight" (30 nights per year instead of 50).

Hand also extended to progressive retirement for civil servants "to whom (he) fully subscribes" and which will be the subject of a separate consultation "from the month of January", as well as "end-of-career planning to the hospital".

On the minimum pension, other "improvements" are envisaged: on the one hand to "go beyond" the 85% of the minimum wage already promised to those who will have worked "all their life", on the other hand to "offer this protection for precarious workers, whose part-time work is often suffered. "

Finally, for special regimes, Mr. Philippe evoked a possible agreement "in the hours or days to come" at SNCF in order to "favor the progressiveness of the implementation of the reform", and affirmed that "the government will be the guarantor. "

He also listed the ongoing exchanges at RATP, the energy sector, and promised that "the future universal system will recognize the specificities" of sailors.

- "It remains insufficient" -

So many "new rights" which "no one will believe if we do not say how we finance them", nuanced the Prime Minister, defending the creation of a "balance age" in addition to the legal age of departure in retirement, with a "bonus-malus" to encourage everyone to work longer.

However, "there is room for maneuver" to achieve financial equilibrium, he added, leaving the door open to other options allowing in particular "to further individualize the trajectories of retirement" and "avoid the blindness" of a uniform age mark.

The employers welcomed these proposals, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux (Medef) saying they were "open to discuss the modalities of the age of balance" and François Asselin (CPME) considering that this device would be "a measure rather of common sense" .

But for unions favorable to the reform, the account is not there. The CFDT thus remains "firmly opposed to this age of balance", recalled Laurent Berger, for whom "the search for short-term balance" is "a hard point".

"It remains insufficient," summed up Cyril Chabanier (CFTC), to whom "the age of equilibrium is not suitable", all the more so since "there are other means of achieving it", as l use of the Retirement Reserve Fund.

"The balance must be worked," insisted Laurent Escure, regretting that the government accepts "no new criteria" of arduousness. The secretary general of Unsa nevertheless indicated that his railroad federation had decided to take a "holiday break" after two weeks of strike in transport.

An appeal launched jointly with Yves Veyrier (FO), who considers that "it is up to the government to press the stop button" and to "put aside this very bad idea" of a universal point system.

A "bad project", both "useless" and "dangerous", added François Hommeril (CFE-CGC), who will also "perhaps call January 9".

© 2019 AFP