NICOLAS Sarkozy will take a hazardous step along the path to reshaping France this week when he invites a group of workers to give up zealously defended pension privileges and agree to longer working lives.

In a speech on Tuesday, Sarkozy is expected to propose changes to “special regimes”, the generous pension agreements enjoyed by various sectors of French industry. It will herald the start of a more tense phase of his rule that could plunge France into turmoil.

“We will not sell ourselves cheaply,” said Didier Lapostre, a militant in the CFDT, the largest union, warning of “major conflict” if the government tries to take away the right of train drivers to retire at 50.

“There could be sport and not just in the rugby stadiums,” said Bernard Thibault, leader of the CGT union, in a sarcastic reference to the prospect of strikes and protest marches during the Rugby World Cup being hosted by France. Olivier Besancenot, a Trotskyist politician and postman, has called pension reform proposals “a declaration of war”.

Such warnings coincided with signs that the postelection honeymoon enjoyed by Sarkozy, the most popular president since General Charles de Gaulle, has ended. A poll last week showed his approval rating in September falling by five points, to 62%.

Part of the drop could be because of the gloom of people picking bills off the doormat after the summer holidays. Sluggish economic growth and global financial insecurity might also have played a role in souring the mood.

The changing circumstances might weaken the resolve of “Sarko” to push through reforms before municipal elections next spring, no matter how much he scoffed during his presidential campaign at the notion of retirement at 50.

Yet he knows that tackling the special regimes is a necessary prelude to a more far-ranging reform of the outdated pensions system, including an increase in the retirement age to 62 from 60, among the lowest in Europe.

In the home of Cartesian logic, the special regimes would seem to defy reason: employees of the SNCF railway company have long enjoyed the right to retire at 55 – and train drivers at 50 – under agreements going back to the days of steam.

Workers in the giant state gas and electricity companies enjoy the same privileges, as do some fishermen and, more bizarrely, under arrangements dating from 1698 and 1914 respectively, employees of the Paris Opera and the Comédie Française. The Bank of France, the chamber of commerce and industry and lawyers’ clerks are covered by the same cushy regime.

Lapostre, 54, a former ticket collector, has been looking forward to retiring next year from the rail company’s human resources department. “If they try to take away our retirement it will open a Pandora’s box,” he said. “There will be a general mobilisation. We won’t roll over without a fight.”

Sarkozy, whose manifesto revolved around the theme of “work more, earn more”, has to tread carefully: the last time France attempted to reform its pension system it provoked a government collapse.

That debacle in 1997 helps to explain why successive governments have been hesitant on economic reform. Until now.

Sarkozy has already fulfilled some election pledges and one of them – a law to guarantee a minimum public transport service during strikes – seemed designed to deal with problems that might follow any attempt to change train drivers’ pensions.

What prompted the government to cave in before was the total paralysis of the country. If commuters can still get to work, the argument goes, the unions will have been weakened. That would allow the government to push through the rest of Sarkozy’s planned reforms, including a further relaxation of the 35-hour working week – if not its abolition – and other measures making it easier to hire and fire workers.

Some 1.1m workers are covered by the special regimes, but because these pensions are financed by only 500,000 current employees they account for almost all the estimated £5 billion national pension deficit.

Sarkozy has advocated system in which everyone can retire at the same age. Lapostre has no quarrel with this idea.

“Let’s make it 55,” he said.

- Sarkozy has offered Germany access to the French nuclear arsenal, according to Der Spiegel magazine. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, rejected the offer immediately.

WORLD WATCH
Why the fight about work?

Why does pension reform matter? Sarkozy is trying to get the French to work harder. Part of that involves persuading them to work longer hours. His government has brought in a law exempting work above 35 hours a week from income tax. But he also wants them to work more years and that involves raising the retirement age. Before he can do that, he has to end the “special regimes”.

What are they? Some workers are allowed to retire at 50 or 55 under agreements reached in a bygone age when early retirement was an incentive to take jobs entailing hardship.

Can’t Sarkozy simply change the law? Yes, but the unions are insisting reforms be made in consultation with them or they will call for a general strike. This was what put paid to the government of Alain Juppé in 1997, after commuters could not get to work and blamed the reformers not the strikers.

Don’t the French want to reform? Sarkozy says his election victory in May was a signal that they do. A poll after he came to power showed 56% in favour of reforming the special regimes. So he may go ahead this week as a test of union strength before embarking on other economic reforms.

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