It is nicknamed the “district of traitors”. In Yvelines, several candidates played the game of musical chairs. First there is Babette de Rozières, chef who successively supported Anne Hidalgo, Valérie Pécresse, Emmanuel Macron and more recently Éric Ciotti, ally of the National Rally.
It is under the dual label of the right and the extreme right that she will face a man who has also moved from one camp to another, the former Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau, who left the government in December following the adoption of the immigration bill*. “A turn to the right”, he told us today, which “was going to give the RN points”.
The former director of the ARS of Ile-de-France, who was once a communist and served in the office of the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, joined the New Popular Front on the quota of the Socialist Party and Place publique. He explains to us the reasons for this form of political remigration.
How did you experience the announcement of the dissolution?
This is inseparable from the shock of the RN score. All the polls predicted it, but this Sunday evening I realized that I hadn’t gotten used to it. I was unable to draw any immediate political conclusions from the dissolution. I was in a form of questioning about this choice, even though I heard the president’s words. So I went to bed on Sunday saying to myself: “What do we do about this? »And I was convinced that the central space would not be the place to welcome the voices of those who do not want the RN.
Why did you choose to join the New Popular Front?
I have always considered that there is a right and a left, and I place myself on the left. And then I found that in the European campaign, the words and positioning of Raphaël Glucksmann and the list he led seemed to me to be a path through which we could reconstruct proposals and a space for dialogue which is not not monolithic.
Finally you found some sort of proposal on the left?
I’m not going to rewrite history, that would make people look like fools. I was one of those who, at my level, coming from the left, thought that they could have a space in Macronism and influence issues. I think, for example, that part of what has been done is progress, for example on reducing unemployment. Everything is not dark. Afterwards, when there was the immigration law, I was a minister, I did not procrastinate, the political disagreement was deep.
You are invested in the 7th constituency of Yvelines. Your Renaissance opponent says you don’t know the territory. What connects you to the inhabitants of this space?
I will never get into a controversy with the Renaissance candidate. I only have one opponent, it’s the RN. But I’m not going to invent links that I don’t have with Conflans-Sainte-Honorine or Meulan-en-Yvelines or anything else. Afterwards, I was director of the ARS (Regional Health Agency) and I traveled throughout the Ile-de-France region and Yvelines in particular.
You were one of the main architects of Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, as chief of staff to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. Today, you join the New Popular Front, which wants to repeal this reform and return to retirement at 60. Isn’t that a way of denouncing yourself?
The question is legitimate. But I must say that I am a little surprised by the words of François Bayrou [« Aurélien Rousseau, ministre de la Santé, directeur de cabinet de la Première ministre, s’engage dans une alliance dont le premier engagement est de supprimer la réforme des retraites qu’il a lui même écrite. »]. I have the impression of being presented as a Professor Nimbus in his laboratory who has invented his pension reform. That’s not how it happens.
I was chief of staff to the Prime Minister but I was not the political authority who decided. And then I am not going to report on the exchanges and discussions that I had with the Prime Minister, but this reform has moved. And today, I have no difficulty in considering that we can put this project back on the agenda. A reform where we cannot get unions on board always gives us food for thought. Afterwards, does the New Popular Front program say that we are going to retire again at 60? No.
He says that we must “reaffirm the common objective of the right to retire at 60”…
Yes, but if you discuss this formula with the negotiators, you will see that it is a compromise formula.
But concretely, do you agree with retirement at 60? At LFI, it’s quite clear…
I do not believe it is possible or desirable for everyone to return to 60 years old. There are people who have physically difficult jobs, and others less so – I am one of them – and they can work longer to ensure the sustainability of the system. And no doubt we need to re-discuss an approach based on contribution duration. But it is not in three days that the left-wing parties will decide on this point of view. And even if they had decided, we also say that we must work with all the other social forces, and I deeply believe in social democracy.
This is certainly quite clear at LFI, but the New Popular Front is not a copy of the program of La France insoumise. I remind you that there are 297 constituencies with a socialist, communist or environmentalist candidate, and 229 with an LFI candidate. We are not in Nupes 2. We would take people for imbeciles if we told them that we agreed on everything in three days. But the conviction is that faced with the risk that faces us we must remember that what unites us is more essential than what separates us. What unites us is obvious but not at all trivial: it is to prevent the country from falling apart. What separates us, we will work on it. Disagreements can be managed. It is discussed.
You were Minister of Health and Prevention, and at the time you said you refused to “force a doctor to set up somewhere”. But the program of the New Popular Front recommends “regulating the installation of doctors in medical deserts”. Do you disagree with this part of the program?
I defended and I still defend the fact that we could, through other tools, and in particular conventional dialogue with doctors, respond to the issue of medical deserts, which is one of the major concerns of the French. But I said, including when I was minister, that if the tools we put in place failed, perhaps we would have to use other methods. A new medical agreement was signed ten days ago, it includes commitments, I believe that it is something that is moving, and that can move quickly. Afterwards, if at any point everyone does not take their responsibilities, we will have to invent another system. I would have done it if I had remained a minister.
What are the proposals of the New Popular Front that are most important to you?
There is a subject which is very true, very real, which today is to reopen the tax project on the highest incomes. Current policy has helped businesses return, but it has become too much a policy in favor of the rich. I think we need to be able to find a different balance point.
* Also appearing are Nadia Hai for Renaissance; Ali Kaya, CGT trade unionist invested by Lutte Ouvrière; Jack Lefebvre, candidate under the colors of the “Independent Democratic Workers Party”, Colette Aubrée for Reconquête and Julien Fréjabue for Les Républicains.