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The right-wing dominated Senate adopted on Wednesday evening, after a fierce procedural battle with the left, the key article of the pension reform bill raising the legal retirement age in France from 62 to 64 .
It is a flagship measure, rejected by a large majority of French people, according to all opinion polls. The Senate, dominated by the right, approved on the night of Wednesday to Thursday March 9 article 7 of the pension reform project which plans to lower the legal age of retirement from 62 years to 64 years.
Article 7 of the amending Social Security financing bill was adopted with 201 votes in favor and 115 against, out of 345 voters. “I am delighted that the debates made it possible to reach this vote”, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne tweeted..
Silent since the beginning of the examination of the text, last Thursday, the senatorial majority has released on this article since last night the heavy artillery of the regulation to accelerate the debates in the face of the “obstruction” of the left. She was indignant at a “coup of force”.
“You are botching the debate”, “the so-called wisdom of the Senate has taken a hit”, criticized the leader of the Communist senators Eliane Assassi. “We will never accept that you mélenchoniez the Senate,” retorted his Republican counterpart, Bruno Retailleau.
The debates in the upper house resume Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m. around a controversial amendment by Bruno Retailleau who pleads for the gradual extinction of special regimes, voted in article 2, to apply to employees already in office.
Emmanuel Macron’s closed door to the unions
For its part, the inter-union, which wants to continue to put pressure with a new mobilization on Saturday and the multiplication of actions, asked to be received “urgently” by the Head of State “so that he withdraws his reform “.
“The door of the Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, always remains open”, replied the Prime Minister in the Senate on Wednesday, assuring that “the government is always ready and open to dialogue”, and that it is “in consultation and in the dialogue that this text was constructed”.
Earlier, government spokesman Olivier Véran had explained that the President of the Republic “respected the institutions (…) today, it is parliamentary time that is in progress”. “It would be a mistake if the president received” the unions, who “want to repersonalize the debate around ‘for or against the president’,” said a government source. “The president doesn’t have to get into this.”
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Emmanuel Macron, who had made reform a pillar of his presidential program, has remained in the background since his presentation in early January, leaving the Prime Minister and his government in the front line.
Elisabeth Borne is counting on a vote from the Republicans to avoid using 49.3 (adoption of a text without a vote), which would be perceived as a forced passage. Especially since, by Olivier Véran’s own admission, the project “does not win the support of a majority of French people”.
This is why Emmanuel Macron will have to “reformulate a project for the country” and thus “open a new page” of the five-year term at the end of the pension reform, the president of the MoDem François Bayrou judged on Wednesday.
Will the majority be able to be united? Not to vote for the reform would be “unfair”, warned on Franceinfo the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, for the intention of recalcitrant macronist elected officials.
The executive wants to go quickly and bets on a breathlessness of the social movement
The government thus hopes to quickly obtain a first victory with the vote by the upper house of the entire text by the deadline of Sunday. Should then follow a joint committee bringing together several senators and deputies. If they agree on a text, the final adoption of the reform could take place on March 16.
Failing agreement, the National Assembly will have the last word with the risk of having to implement its contested reform by ordinances in the absence of validation by the deputies.
The executive is also betting on a loss of steam in the social movement. “France is not at a standstill” as promised by the unions and “we are very far from the record” that the unions “claim”, we relativized from a government source.
The unions took to the streets on Tuesday, 1.28 million demonstrators according to the police, 3.5 million according to the CGT. But the rate of strikers remained below records, while the circulation of Parisian trains and metro improved on Wednesday. Train traffic will still be “severely disrupted” on Thursday, according to the SNCF, but that of Parisian transport will improve, according to the RATP.
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On Wednesday, smaller protests took place in connection with International Women’s Day. According to the sectors, blockages were underway in several major ports according to the CGT. Roads were blocked and, partially, several educational establishments across the country.
The CGT-Chimie said that fuel shipments were still blocked at the exit of refineries, where the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, threatened to bring in the police.
With AFP