FRONT PAGE" "
Grasp all, lose all. Life is getting ever longer. Solidarity is thus becoming ever more important. At the other end of the chain, education too is becoming ever more demanding. Professional life is undoubtedly starting ever later. And the birth rate is gradually declining. Despite that, people are refusing to prolong their working life, or, more precisely, to close the parenthesis of a blind policy… There are certain self-evident truths that cannot be placed in question today, but that mortgage our future. There are also “values” that are short-circuited as a result, though they do not have the same importance: a society of consumerism and prosperity, social security for everyone, access to quality health care for everyone, a competitiveness maintained at a world level, a comfortable pension… We, in Europe, don’t realise how fortunate we are. We don’t grasp how far we can be proud of our social advances. But, if we are to maintain them, there does exist nonetheless a price of solidarity to be paid for future generations. For it is they whose lives are being put at risk. A short-term policy has something suicidal about it… An Arab legend tells of a shepherd who had the good fortune of being able to marry a princess. She posed conditions. But our young pretender a few days later had the opportunity to marry the queen herself. Alas, for that reason he had to renounce marriage to the princess. He did so without hesitation. But he soon realized that the queen was no more than a mirage… He who had wanted ever more ended up by losing what he already had… The real problem is this. But beware: it mustn’t be always the same who pay the price. A career policy must go hand in hand with other policies, even if painful for some, not the same, of course. Let us not forget, either, that work is not equal for everyone: some jobs are harder than others and more wearing. In some cases, working conditions have even deteriorated. Taking early pension does not work in the same way for everyone. It is not possible, even in Europe, in a society ever more distinguished by inequality, to apply the same conditions to everyone, and it is probably from this that current misunderstandings arise.
