Within business circles, the far right Rassemblement National's (RN) proposal to lower the retirement age to 60, much like the idea of exiting the euro, didn't bode well. So recent comments by the far-right party's president, Jordan Bardella, did not go unnoticed. Speaking on RTL readio and public television channel France 2 on Tuesday, June 11, Bardella said he would not go back, at least initially, on the pension reform adopted in April 2023, which raised the retirement age to 64. "We'll see," he said on RTL, responding to a question about a possible repeal of the reform, which RN lawmakers had fought in the Assemblée Nationale. "We'll have to make choices," he warned, underlining the difficult budgetary situation and the challenge of the "debt wall." "Economically, I'm reasonable," he insisted.

The RN says it has no intention of abandoning its promise to reduce the retirement age to 60 for people who entered the workforce before the age of 20. However, this will not be the priority and will not feature on the platform of these early legislative elections, as Renaud Labaye, RN leader Marine Le Pen's right-hand man in the Assemblée, told Le Monde. Nor is it certain that the promise of a return to retirement at 60 will feature in the platform, which will be devoted to the "emergencies" according to the RN: immigration, insecurity and purchasing power.

Speaking to France 2 on Tuesday evening, Bardella said he wanted to revisit "the Macron reform, which is a reform on the economic level catastrophic," and does not enable to make savings. But he said this would be done "in a second phase." He stated that the most pressing economic issues are purchasing power – notably energy prices and the exit from the European electricity market – streamlining for businesses and lowering the tax burden on households.

"Jordan Bardella wants to uphold the Macronist pension reform, against the advice of seven out of 10 French people," scoffed La France Insoumise (radical left) MEP Manon Aubry on X. "Jordan Bardella is a replacement Emmanuel Macron for the big bosses, even more brutal." A similar message came from the ranks of the Parti Socialiste: "Mr. Bardella's far right, together with Mr. Ciotti's LR [Les Républicains, right wing] (...) are the objective allies of Mr. Macron's liberals," said Boris Vallaud, the former leader of the Socialist lawmakers in the Assemblée Nationale. "Only a left-wing ballot will repeal the brutal pension reform!"

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