Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau spoke this Sunday about the minimum service approach to limit the impact on travelers of strikes such as that of SNCF controllers this weekend. “It seems to me that we should work on a minimum service,” said Marc Fesneau, a guest on France Inter’s “Political Questions” program. “I would prefer to do it, even if I am not a specialist on the subject,” he added.
According to him, a minimum service would make it possible to avoid “inflicting, even in the event of conflict, a certain number of obligations on our fellow citizens, whether they are on vacation or working, in sometimes crucial periods.” He was questioned about the strike by SNCF controllers, which has seriously disrupted travel since Thursday afternoon and will end on Sunday afternoon.
One in two TGVs was cancelled, preventing some 150,000 travelers from going on holiday, out of the million planned for the weekend, according to the SNCF.
“It is not about questioning” the right to strike
Marc Fesneau estimated that “without a doubt” it would be necessary to legislate on the minimum service, although he recalled that “it is not about questioning” the strike as a constitutional right. “There will be parliamentary debates, we will see how all this can be organized. There are texts, legislative proposals that seem to have been in bloom for a week,” according to the minister.
Several parliamentary proposals have attempted, in recent years, to toughen the 2007 law on minimum service in transport, especially after the Christmas weekend episode of 2022 that left 200,000 travelers in the lurch. But none prospered. A text from the senatorial right is already being prepared that prohibits notifications during holidays and “the first two and last two days” of school vacations.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Wednesday deplored “a form of custom” in each holiday period “of counting on the announcement of a strike” by railway workers. “The French know that striking is a right,” but “also that working is a duty,” he said. He encouraged Parliament to take up this debate. The president of the Macronist senators, François Patriat, admitted that he would think about “all the new developments” that would allow “these inopportune strikes” to be regulated.
Source: BFM TV
