EXCLUSIVE – Laurent Berger: “I don’t want to have to ask anything from those who govern us”

On Wednesday, he will turn the page of twenty-five years of activism, but he is not yet afraid of emptiness: “I feel more relief than lack. Leading the CFDT is great, but it’s also tiring and demanding. “When Laurent Berger told us this last week in his vast office at 4, boulevard de la Villette, already half emptied by him, his right eye twitched with fatigue. The last few months have been tough for the man who was the bridgehead of the challenge to the pension reform and was unable to prevent its promulgation.

But Laurent Berger has chosen both his departure date and the one who will succeed him at the head of the CFDT, so he bows out without regret. On Wednesday, he will p the torch to Marylise Léon. In his farewell speech, he intends to speak to the 2,700 activists gathered in Paris of “the extraordinary chance”, of the “gift he was given to lead” the central for eleven years.