“Can Aurélien Pradié remain number two in the party” if he opposes pension reform? To this question from the JDD last week, the boss of LR senators Bruno Retailleau answered in the negative, while the party generally supported the reform while negotiating with the majority. Éric Ciotti, recent president of the Republicans, acted this Saturday the withdrawal of the deputy of Lot in a press release, dismissing him from his functions within the party.
“His repeated positions (were) no longer in line with the values of coherence, unity and unity which must guide the Republican right”, justified the boss of the LRs in a press release, denouncing a “personal adventure”, which “cannot replace collective action and the spirit of responsibility”.
Disagreement on the legal age for long careers
The crisis had been brewing for weeks and broke out the day after the end of the tumultuous review of the reform at the Palais-Bourbon. While Éric Ciotti and Olivier Marleix, leader of the LR group in the Assembly, have been supporting the government’s pension reform project for weeks, which would raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, Aurélien Pradié, who occupied the place of executive vice-president of the party, openly conditions his support for the reform on strict progress on the device of long careers.
The MP for Lot intends to obtain strict assurances from the government that anyone who enters the labor market before the age of 21 can retire at the full rate after having contributed 43 annual installments, without the legal retirement age constitutes a barrier. If the government seemed to take a step in this direction on several occasions, first by declarations by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, then by remarks in the hemicycle of Olivier Dussopt, Aurélien Pradié like other LR deputies have considered that the guarantees provided by the executive did not completely rule out the possibility for certain people with long careers of having to contribute 44 years.
“The only fate that matters is that of the French for whom we are committed. Convictions are defensible. Relentlessly, ”tweeted Aurélien Pradié on Saturday, a few minutes after the publication of the LR press release. Éric Ciotti and Aurélien Pradié had scrapped during the elections for the presidency of the party, with the president of the senators LR Bruno Retailleau. After his victory, Éric Ciotti announced on January 18 that he would have a management team including Aurélien Pradié as executive vice-president.