PARIS, May 25 (Reuters) – French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told unions on Friday the government would absorb 35 billion euros ($41 billion) of SNCF rail company debts, a labour union said after the meeting.
The offer to assume about three-quarters of the SNCF’s liabilities would go some way towards meeting the demands of more moderate unions involved in a protracted strike over plans for the biggest rail services shake-up since nationalisation.
The Unsa union, which revealed the offer after meeting Philippe, is one of two centrist unions behind the highly disruptive industrial action, seen as a test of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader reform agenda.
The debt relief would happen in two stages, with 25 billion euros assumed by the state in 2020 and another 10 billion in 2022, according to union leader Roger Dillenseger, who said the pledge showed that negotiations were making progress.
He spoke shortly before Philippe was due to make a statement on the issue. Debt absorption is seen as a key concession that could prompt some unions to withdraw from the strike, which has roughly halved rail timetables over much of the past two months. ($1 = 0.8555 euros) (Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey; Writing by Brian Love, Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Laurence Frost)
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