After more than four hours of meeting in a joint committee (CMP), Thursday, January 13 in the afternoon, deputies and senators have, finally, not succeeded in reaching an agreement on the bill establishing the vaccination pass. The text will have to leave for a shuttle between the National Assembly and the Senate for its final adoption by the deputies.
According to our information, discussions on the “Bill strengthening the tools for managing the health crisis” were, however, very close to an agreement on several points (identity check at the restaurant, penalties for breach of telework, for example) until the president of the group Les Républicains (LR) in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, congratulates himself on his Twitter account : “The CMP on the vaccination pass a given reason in the Senate, it is the victory of the good sense. Senators have obtained many clarifications and simplifications. The pass is intended to protect the French and nothing else… no offense to Emmanuel Macron ”.
“Out of the question to vote for a text at a discount”
However, this tweet has robbed parliamentarians of the majority, even causing the end of negotiations in the early evening. The boss of the deputies La République en Marche, Christophe Castaner, thus recorded on Twitter the “Disagreement with the senatorial majority. It was out of the question to vote for a text at a discount ”. « The modifications proposed by the Senate had only one objective: to allow an agreement within the LR ”, he also estimated. For the president of the law committee, Yaël Braun-Pivet, Mr. Retailleau’s tweet “ist an attack on institutions ”, a–she denounced from the National Assembly.
Note that the text was initiated under the accelerated procedure by the government: in the event of further disagreement, it is the National Assembly – where the majority and its allies are in the majority – which will have the last word. The date of application of the vaccination pass, initially desired by the government for January 15, will therefore not be possible, in particular if the oppositions refer to the Constitutional Council on one or more provisions of the text.
It is therefore a new parliamentary shuttle which is engaged, in a very tight schedule: passage in the law committee in the Assembly from this Thursday evening, from 10 p.m., according to information from the World, then an examination in public session by the deputies, during a probable night session – before a probable arrival in the Senate on Saturday or at the beginning of next week. The text will then be voted again, during a final reading, in the National Assembly.