Paris (AFP)

Pushing back the retirement age to 64 within one year of the presidential election, a scenario studied by the executive according to the press, would be "a crass injustice" and "sheer madness", worried Tuesday the first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure.

"I would vote against, against absolutely," he said on LCI, asked about his position if such a measure should be included in the Social Security budget for 2022, voted in the fall, as reported on Monday. the business daily Les Echos.

And if a protest erupted in the streets, "of course, I would encourage it and I would participate in it," he added.

Because "in a country like ours, fractured like never before, where conflict has never been at this level (...), wanting to start on a reform of this nature, not prepared, improvised, (... ) and without any negotiation, it is pure madness and it is a crass injustice ", he justified.

Raising the starting age to 64 for all amounts to "prolonging the inequalities of life including in retirement", while it is necessary to take into account "life expectancy", the "very different arduousness" according to trades, he argued.

Olivier Faure said he was "worried" to see Emmanuel Macron "give the feeling that he wants to make further progress on pension reform and therefore plunge the country into a form of extraordinary tension", "rather than take into account the result" regional and departmental elections which marked a rout for the presidential party LREM.

"For the majority it is a huge failure and they cannot fail to acknowledge receipt."

However, with the regional ballot, at the end of which in particular the PS retained its five regions, "a possible has opened up", estimated Mr. Faure: "We are no longer condemned to this fatality of a second round (of the presidential election of 2022, Editor's note) between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen ".

Moreover, according to him, "it is obvious: there is no president who has lost all the intermediate elections who found himself in a favorable situation for the following presidential election".

Asked also about his statements the day before judging that the PS is now the "driving force" on the left, while environmentalists come up against "a glass ceiling, or even a green ceiling" when they lead the union, he confirmed them "word for word", stressing his wish for a "coalition contract with these forces".

As for the "disagreements" with La France insoumise, "yes there is competition on the left, yes there are different ways of looking at it, so yes I am one of those who thinks that we need a sincere, conquering left, but also a left of convictions, but not populist, conspiratorial, which turns its back on its history ", he detailed.

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