French president Emmanuel Macron said he would persevere with railway reform "until the end" during his first comments on the SNCF railway strike on Thursday.
In a rare television interview in a school in the Norman village of Berd’huis (population 1,000), Mr Macron sought to reverse the impression that his administration is contemptuous of opponents of railway reform. His paternal grandfather worked for the SNCF, he noted. It was no longer possible to hire 25-year-olds in the conditions of the past, he said.
The railway strike which has crippled the country began on April 3rd and is scheduled to continue two out of every five days until June 28th.
The main measure of the reform is that future employees will not be given automatic pay raises and the guarantee of life-long employment. “All workers who are already on the job will retain their status. It is a contract,” Mr Macron said, attempting to allay suspicions that his government will later attempt to rescind the status of present employees.
Mr Macron tried to dispel other misunderstandings created by distrust on the part of the unions and the government’s sometimes technocratic language. The SNCF’s transformation into a limited company does not mean it is being privatised, he said. “The SNCF will remain public. This will be put into law. One hundred per cent of its capital will be state capital.”
Mr Macron reiterated his government’s promise not to close small, local railway lines. The state could not pay off the SNCF’s entire €50 billion debt – a demand of the strikers – but “will invest €10 million each day for the next 10 years”, he said.
Mr Macron was relaxed and cheerful during the interview. He is to give a second, two-hour, 35-minute interview to three other media outlets on Sunday night, in an effort to reverse his declining popularity among old-age pensioners, disadvantaged and rural populations.
A recent Elabe poll showed that Mr Macron’s approval rating has declined to 27 per cent among working-class French, and to 41 per cent among the middle classes. Sixty-five per cent of white-collar professionals like him.
Responding to allegations that he is the “president of the rich”, Mr Macron said, “I am the president of all French people. The rich don’t need a president. They manage very well on their own.”
Mr Macron’s elimination of a confiscatory wealth tax on capital, known as the ISF, has been widely criticised by the left. “People pay income tax and death duties,” he said. Doing away with the ISF on capital investments, while maintaining a 30 per cent flat rate on capital dividends “is not injustice”, he continued. “It’s investment policy . . . Preventing people from succeeding is not justice. Increasing public expenditure is not justice.”
Though he denied there was a "fracture" between urban and rural France, Mr Macron admitted that: "There is a France of metropolises, which succeeds in globalisation. Right next to that, there is a France of [immigrant] neighbourhoods which live with difficulty, which is a little ghettoised. There is a France of the periphery, which lives poorly. There is a rural France, which is losing its inhabitants."
As promised during his campaign, Mr Macron has increased the General Social Contribution (CSG) for 60 per cent of pensioners. The government’s rationale is that the elderly benefited from decades of massive government spending, and saved money. They can be expected to show “solidarity” with younger generations now.
Mr Macron insisted that he is no more contemptuous of pensioners than of railway workers. French people are living 10-15 years longer than the previous generation. Furthermore, his progressive abolition of the housing tax will compensate for the rise in the CSG. “If we don’t make this effort . . . we will no longer be able to finance our retirement system,” he said.
Terrorist attacks that killed four people in Carcassonne on March 23rd prompted widespread demands on the right that Mr Macron imprison suspected Islamists, deport foreigners or dual nationals on watchlists, and ban Salafism, which advocates a return to Islam as it was practised in the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
Mr Macron said there is not a clear definition of Salafism. He will continue to close mosques “that preach things that are not in conformity with the laws of the republic” and will end hidden foreign financing of mosques. But, he cautioned: “Radical Islam, that is not all Islam. It’s not all Muslims.”
Referring to protests over the reduction of the maximum speed limit to 80km/h, except on four-lane highways, Mr Macron said the French “got heated up over this affair. French people don’t like traffic regulations.”
He promised that fines collected under the new law, which takes effect on July 1st, will be devoted to hospitals that care for accident victims. If the measure does not save lives, he promised it would be rescinded after two years.