Bayrou admitted that an agreement hadn’t yet been found on how to compensate workers who have physically demanding jobs or how to fully finance the proposed tweaks, but described those issues as “solvable.”
“The totality of decisions that have been the subject of at least implicit agreement are impressive,” he said.
Bayrou convened the pensions meeting at the beginning of his tenure in January hoping to find agreement on fixes to a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 that didn’t put the system further in the red.
After four months of closed-door talks failed to yield a deal, the center-left Socialist Party, which initially gave Bayrou time to see how the conclave played out, filed a motion of no confidence against the government.
Bayrou said he believed the threat from the Socialists was more of a muscle flex than a real sign of resistance.
“They needed to show a sign of opposition for internal reasons,” Bayrou said. “But I don’t believe that, on the substance, the Socialist Party, with its history, can disagree with this method.”
