Europe 1 with AFP 8:38 p.m., January 22, 2023

During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron slipped a word on pension reform.

If he says he is open to an "adjustment" of the text, he affirmed his desire to "move forward" on the subject, a few hours before the presentation of the project in the Council of Ministers. 

Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday "wish" that the government and Parliament could "adjust" his disputed pension reform, while affirming that it was necessary to "move forward" on the subject, on the eve of its presentation to the Council of Ministers.

After a "social time" of consultation with the unions, "there is now a political time which opens in the Assembly and it must be respected", underlined the Head of State during a press conference. with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, received in Paris.

"And so I hope that the government with the parliamentarians in the National Assembly and then in the Senate can work on the text and adjust it," he added.

“There has already been an opening, a change”

Asked to say if he intended to maintain at all costs the postponement of the legal age of departure from 62 to 64, despite strong social mobilization against his project, he refused to "answer on this subject".

"I will not replace myself either for the government, which will propose" a "project at 64 on Monday to the Council of Ministers", nor for the parliamentary debate "which follows", explained the president.

"But we know approximately, and even exactly, the needs that are ours. They are known," he insisted.

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He recalled having been elected with a "mandate" to raise the age "to 65 by 2031", which has already been "arranged" following consultations with the social partners and political parties.

“There has already been an opening, a change,” he argued.

"But I believe that here, now, we have to be able to move forward and get involved. And that the government can do its job with Parliament, with serenity, the will to convince and to move the country forward," he said. still pleaded.

Emmanuel Macron, while defending the right to strike and demonstrate, also called for there to be "the least possible nuisance for all our compatriots".