French premier moves to soothe pensions fury

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said yesterday that the country needs "cooling off” after weeks of fierce clashes over Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms, apparently distancing herself from the inflexible president.Divergence is rare between Macron and Borne, a career technocrat who regularly denies having further political ambitions."We have to give people a rest. The country needs cooling off,” Borne told media including daily Le Monde.After a meeting with worker representatives broke up without any progress on Wednesday, she added that "the unions must not emerge humiliated” from the pensions battle."It’s better to have calming words than stigmatising words,” Laurent Berger, head of France’s largest union the CFDT, told broadcaster BFM yesterday morning.Nevertheless, "if things are to be completely calmed down, this reform must be set aside” in line with demands from the united front of unions, he added.In comments from Macron’s multi-day state visit to China this week, a source in the president’s entourage had insisted the pension reform plan was democratically approved.Opponents of the law were infuriated when the government last month used a constitutional provision to ram their changes through France’s hung parliament without a vote."If people wanted to retire at 60, they shouldn’t have elected Emmanuel Macron president,” the entourage source said.The source also attacked the historically moderate CFDT directly, complaining that the union had not been open to compromise on pension reform.By contrast, Borne had managed "something other than pouring oil on the fire”, union chief Berger said, saying that "there’s never been a problem of respect” between him and the prime minister.Looking ahead, Borne said yesterday that "it’s important for us to say what direction we’re heading in before looking for allies to vote laws through”.Her comments were an apparent break from the mission Macron had given her to find support for the government programme in the fractured lower house.Borne quickly moved to close the gap, saying on a visit to southern France yesterday that she had the "same objectives” as Macron."I think we share the same analysis: the country needs cooling off,” she said. "We’re perfectly aligned on that question.”In a rare and swift retort from a foreign trip, a person close to Macron, who asked not to be named, had said that "the president set the direction in his TV interview” two weeks ago.In that appearance, he tried to shift debate onto new priorities such as reducing unemployment, health, education and the environment.The pensions reform is currently being examined by France’s Constitutional Council, which will rule on whether the law is permissible on April 14.The council has the power to strike down the bill – or parts of it – if it deems it to breach the constitution, but rarely rejects an entire piece of legislation.Macron and his government want to lift the legal retirement age by two years to 64 to prevent the pension budget from falling deep into deficit.Trade unions say the money can be found elsewhere.