But two key center-left political parties that the government is trying to woo, the Greens and the Socialists, have said that some sort of concession on pension reform is needed to bring them into the fold.
“If François Bayrou refuses to suspend the pension reform, he won’t survive the next three weeks,” Socialist MP Philippe Brun, who has taken part in the talks between his party and the government, said Friday.
However, any concession on pensions — including, as the Socialists have suggested, a temporary pause in the gradual increase of the minimum retirement age — would raise the deficit Bayrou is trying to bring down.
Bayrou’s finance minister signaled that the government may be willing to dilute President Emmanuel Macron’s hard-fought but widely loathed pension reform. | Pool photo by Ludovic Marin via AFP/Getty Images
Frédéric Souillot, the head of the Workers’ Force trade union, told BFMTV that the prime minister told union members that he would decide whether or not to put retirement reform on the negotiating table before Tuesday’s address.
What about Le Pen?
Amid these developments, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has been sidelined despite being the largest single group in the National Assembly, the more-powerful lower house of the French legislature.
The Barnier government had previously sought the National Rally’s support to stay afloat and pass a budget, even handing it some policy wins during negotiations. Yet Le Pen’s party ultimately voted to oust Barnier over his spending plans, arguing that the budget burdened the middle class and accusing the government of having opened negotiations with them too late.