Presidential elections 2022: retirement at 60, the thorn in the side of Marine Le Pen – archyde

When certain elected representatives of the National Rally (RN) seek to circumvent the thorny subject of retirement at 60, they let go of a smile or a: “Joker! “ For months this flagship measure of Marine Le Pen’s project since 2012 has divided the party into two camps. Those, on the one hand, who want to keep the social fiber of the marinist line which had triumphed at the head of the National Front ten years ago. Those, on the other hand, who seek to multiply the winks to the right in a strategy of normalization. Marine Le Pen has, it seems, decided.

“I maintain and I will maintain”, she replied, questioned on Saturday September 11 in Fréjus (Var) in a beach bar, on the sidelines of her back-to-school meeting. Before reaffirming it on Tuesday on Europe 1, with a long emphasis on “The condition of forty annuities”. “It is natural to imagine that someone who has worn stones all his life or who is a plasterer has more need to retire at 60 than a lawyer or an accountant”, justified the deputy RN of Pas-de-Calais, without specifying that with its reform the lawyer and the accountant would leave, them too, three years earlier, compared to the forty-three annuities for a retirement at full rate.

In reality, Emmanuel Macron’s rival is relying on a confidential survey, ordered to test more than 100 measures with the French and help his teams to build his presidential project. The results of this investigation were presented to the management of the RN and to the Horaces, a group of around twenty senior officials and shadow advisers, during the weekend of September 4 and 5. Retirement at 60 is included and, to the relief of the party staff, would largely win support. In Fréjus, Saturday, M^me Le Pen was thus able to praise his proposal as being ” very popular “, and even “Majority in opinion”.

A dangerous totem

But his project remains double-edged. Marine Le Pen may try to explain it – “I was asked the question 2,866 times”, she said ironically in the spring – nothing helps: it feeds the trial in lack of economic and budgetary credibility. According to Bruno Le Maire’s cabinet, the cost of such a reform would amount to 40 billion euros per year.

M^me Le Pen sees it on the contrary “The art of making choices, of financing that rather than anything else” : introducing retirement at age 60 with forty years of contribution constitutes, for her, ” a priority “. The savings she mentions to achieve this can be broken down into three main levers: job creation, the fight against social fraud and stopping immigration. In other words, rather than “Always ask for the same efforts”, she would do “Savings on harmful expenses”, according to its terms, as state medical aid to illegal aliens (1 billion euros).

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