In a tweet posted on Friday, the head of Tesla and Twitter praised a “difficult, but just” pension reform in France. Elon Musk and Emmanuel Macron met in December in the United States.
The government probably hadn’t counted on this support. In a tweet in response to a video billed as one of a demonstration against pension reform in Lyon, Elon Musk said on Friday that “Macron is doing the hard, but the right thing.”
“The retirement age of 62 was set when life spans were much shorter. It’s impossible for a small number of working people to support a huge number of retirees,” the Tesla boss added.
This declaration made a part of the opposition react, especially from the side of rebellious France. Former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon tweeted this Saturday afternoon: “Choose a side. Capital or work.”
La France MEP insoumise Manon Aubry declared: “if you still doubted that retirement at 64 was a class reform…”. LFI deputy Antoine Léaument for his part stated that “a reform supported by a billionaire is ALWAYS a bad and useless reform”.
The current pension reform project calls for the postponement of the retirement age from 62 to 64, a measure contested by all unions, a large part of the opposition and a large part of public opinion, including at least one million French people (according to the police), or even two million (according to the CGT), who demonstrated on Thursday.
Second DREES datain 2019, a 65-year-old woman could expect to live another 11.5 years without being restricted in activities of daily living due to a health problem, 1.5 years more than in 2008. A 65-year-old man could hope to live 10.4 years without “disability”, compared to 8.7 years in 2008. However, the state of health is unequal depending on variables such as income or profession.
A meeting between Musk and Macron in December
Elon Musk and Emmanuel Macron met in the United States in December for an hour-long interview on content moderation on Twitter. The French president had welcomed a “clear and sincere” discussion.
“Transparent terms of use, significant strengthening of content moderation and protection of freedom of expression: Twitter must make an effort to comply with European regulations,” he had also stated Emmanuel Macron on the social network purchased by the American billionaire in 2022.
“It was an honor to see you again. We look forward to our exciting projects in France!” he had to write Elon Musk in response to one of the Head of State’s tweets.
After a much criticized debut at the helm of Twitter, Elon Musk announced in December his intention to leave the helm of the social network as soon as he “found someone crazy enough” to replace him, explaining that the billionaire will therefore focus on the “software team and server”.