Paris (AFP)

Special schemes, liberal professions, small pensions, hardship: after a debate in the Senate, Laurent Pietraszewski, the new government pensioner, had to answer Tuesday evening a battery of questions in the Assembly, on the initiative of LR deputies .

"You are sailing by sight (...) When will the special regimes go out? How much will this masquerade cost the French?", Attacked the boss of the group LR Damien Abad, who had asked for these exchanges, judging the Parliament "trampled" until then.

"There are countless backsliding. Mr. Macron manages to block the country without even reforming it," continued Virginie Duby-Muller (LR), followed by her colleague Aurélien Pradié who called on the government to "get out of the ambiguity "on future minimum retirement, survivor's pensions or the principle of" universality ".

"Universality is not uniformity," replied Mr. Pietraszewski, in front of a semi-circular hemicycle and in a sometimes agitated climate.

Several LRs also asked why not "maintain autonomous regimes" for liberal professions such as lawyers, and what will happen to their financial reserves. "Integration will be gradual" and "specificities" will be taken into account, without the reserves being put in the "common pot", assured the Secretary of State.

This former LREM deputy who succeeded Jean-Paul Delevoye in December sometimes read his files, sometimes improvised, in front of parliamentarians whom he often knew and who asked him fairly targeted questions.

The most virulent critics came from the left, who called for the withdrawal of the reform project "badly put together" according to Laurence Dumont (PS), Mathilde Panot (LFI) denouncing the "inhumanity" of the government and Jean-Philippe Nilor ( communist group) pointing to the "genocidal" consequences of the overseas project where unemployment is high and careers incomplete. The reform will be "rather favorable to all those you want to defend," retorted the Secretary of State.

"It is a reform of social justice, it is not a budget reform", he repeated many times, recognizing that "consensus is a challenge". "The government is on the move," said Pietraszewski, on the 34th day of the conflict.

Édouard Philippe proposed Tuesday to bring together the social partners on Friday in Matignon to discuss a funding conference, a step in the direction of the CFDT.

"The time must be listening" to the French, to the "adjustment" of the reform, argued Jean-Paul Mattei, deputy MoDem allied with the majority.

© 2020 AFP