“We need action!”. On the ground Thursday three days before the legislative elections between Côtes-d’Armor and Manche, Elisabeth Borne was able to fill out her notebooks of grievances in the face of French people worried about their pensions, purchasing power or the health system.

“The years go by and the more it goes and the less my husband is paid for the work he does”, laments this wife of a pig farmer, challenging the Prime Minister between the stalls of the Lamballe market (Côtes-d’ Armor).

“That’s not the goal”, agrees in return Ms. Borne, then promising to examine in more detail the case of this young retiree, who only receives 420 euros in pension.

Later, it is a CV that the Prime Minister recovers, ensuring that she would send the file to Pôle emploi for “accompaniment”: that of Albert Bellaize, at the RSA and visibly exasperated.

“I’m over 50 and nobody wants me today. I applied, sent 2,000 CVs in four years, I crossed the street several times. Even when I want to be a waiter, I’m refused”, he laments. Ms. Borne considers this situation “not normal”.

“My method is to listen”, also replies the minister to a CGT trade unionist who criticizes the government, two days after having sparked a controversy herself for remarks which made a disabled listener cry on France Bleu radio.

In the campaign Thursday in support of two candidates of the presidential majority in the legislative elections – Olivier Allain in the Côtes-d’Armor, Bertrand Sorre in the Manche – before going to his own constituency of Calvados at the end of the afternoon, Ms. Borne was able to measure the high expectations of the French on the themes that punctuate the news.

“We need acts, not necessarily only exchanges in front of the cameras”, launches him in the streets of Granville (Manche) Marie-Annick, nursing assistant for 30 years at the Avranches hospital.

“We (nursing assistants, editor’s note) leave less because we’re stuck, we can’t do liberal work. But all the nurses leave because they’re fed up, fed up! It’s no longer possible”, she insists, pointing out the difficulties of the public hospital.

“I can assure you, Madam, that we are fully aware that the situation is difficult”, breathes Ms. Borne, referring to the revaluations of the Ségur de la Santé, which has made it possible to take “concrete actions on the table, of which we are aware. that they didn’t fix everything”.

“Access to care is at the heart of our priorities”, she still assures a lady who complains of the “lack of doctors” in the Côtes-d’Armor. “We take the problem head on,” she repeats.

The hit parade of arrests is above all the future pension reform, which Emmanuel Macron has promised to come into force in the summer of 2023.

“The subject is a bit vague, we don’t really know what the government offers for those who have difficult jobs”, laments a worker who works in the paper industry in Nancy, present in Granville for a few days of vacation.

And Ms. Borne to refer to the next “consultations with trade unions and employers’ organizations on the subject”, promising to “take into account the differences” between the trades, without being able to further enlighten her interlocutor.

The theme will also earn him a short joust in Lamballe with Antoine Ravard, the local candidate for Nupes, ironically about the absence of “retirement at 65” on the leaflet distributed on the market by LREM activists. “It is the mother of reforms and we have made it the mother of opposition,” he adds, slipping his own leaflet into the hands of the head of government.

The ping pong will be more peaceful a few minutes later with the outgoing deputy LR Marc Le Fur, who sends Ms. Borne all her “wishes for important national responsibilities”.

A sign that the match is being played more than ever on the left for the executive as the first round approaches, Ms. Borne repeatedly drives the point home against Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “division project”, “taxation and prohibitions at all costs”.

09/06/2022 19:46:45 –         Granville (France) (AFP) –         © 2022 AFP