PARIS, May 25 (Xinhua) -- French Prime Minister Edourad Philippe on Friday confirmed "an unprecedented commitment" to take on 35 billion euros (40.94 billion U.S. dollars) in debt from the state-run rail company SNCF to end the conflict with labor unions angry at a proposed sector reform.
After holding meetings with the country's main rail unions, Philippe offered to absorb 35 billion euros of the SNCF's debt load of 46 billion euros with 25 billion by 2020 and 10 billion euros at the end of President Emmanuel Macron's term.
"We will put an end to 30 years of non-decisions concerning SNCF's debt. Since the early 1990s, no government has actually addressed this problem," he told reporters.
"With this operation, the SNCF will be relieved of a very large part of the debt burden and it will regain financial leeway for the future. From 2020, it will be able to finance without difficulty like all companies, in 2022... it will be in balance," he added.
In order to give the company "a viable long-term business model," the prime minister also pledged an additional annual investment worth 200 million euros over the next four years to increase by 20 percent the number of trains linking Paris and Lyon, France's two largest cities, and slash by half accidents caused by poor infrastructure between Marseille and Nice.
As part of Macron's reform drive, the government targets to open domestic rail passenger services to create dynamism in the sector in addition to new rules of recruitment for "a more efficient and unified" rail operator.
With the aim, it proposed to scrap the special rail worker status, which allows workers to retire on full pension at 52, a decade before other French employees.
Rejecting the proposal, the country's unions started, in early April, a series of month-rolling nationwide rail strikes with a wave of two successive days out of every five days.
They planned 36 days of action for April-June period to force the president to reconsider his reform.
"Exchanges with the unions have always been conducted in a spirit of openness and firmness, by systematically announcing clearly what was open for negotiation and what was not," Philippe stressed.
"The reform proposed by the government was fully discussed in parliament and had led to a quite wide consultation with the trade unions. It is now complete," he said.
In a sign of no near end of the showdown over the reform, Laurent Brun, of the hardline CGT, the main largest union in SNCF, affirmed that "mobilization is more than ever necessary" despite that recent movement was losing momentum.
"The government seems more open but still has trouble committing itself," he was quoted as saying by local media.
French parliament, the National Assembly, on April 17, approved the rail sector reform on which the Senators will vote next month.( 1 euro = 1.17 U.S. dollar)
