2023-05-31 18:05:26
Rarely has the Assembly’s Social Affairs Committee experienced such an eruptive session. It is almost noon, Wednesday, May 31, when its president, Fadila Khattabi (Renaissance), questions the deputies one by one about their vote. By a narrow majority, 38 votes against 34, the members of the committee then rejected the key article of the bill repealing the raising of the retirement age to 64 years. The announcement of the result triggers an outcry interrupted by a suspension of the session.
By dismissing the first article of the text of the Liot group on the grounds that, according to article 40 of the Constitution, a law cannot diminish public resources, the presidential majority marks a point, not final but decisive in the interminable standoff on pension reform. Indeed, article 1 could certainly be reintroduced by way of amendment by the opposition during the examination in session, on June 8, but the President of the Assembly will then be in a position to set it aside by invoking her financial inadmissibility.
After the suspension of the session, the left tried to fight back and tabled more than 1,300 sub-amendments in a few minutes in order to prevent the committee from reaching the final vote on the entire text. The maneuver is clever, because it would then be its initial version which would be discussed in the hemicycle on June 8. Relying on the rules of the Assembly, Fadila Khattabi then announced that she would rule out the examination of the sub-amendments tabled “to obstruct” and go straight to item 2.
La Nupes leaves the room and denounces “scheming”
The anger of the opposition then goes up a notch. Ecologist Sandrine Rousseau accuses Renaissance officials of having “manipulated the commission” when the rebellious Mathilde Panot denounces “the shenanigans” et “authoritarianism” of the presidential party. In a more urban style, the centrist Charles de Courson, rapporteur of the text, criticizes the president of ” sweep ” the right of amendment. “It’s not respect for institutions”, he pleads in vain. The crisis provoked an emergency meeting of the office of the Social Affairs Committee, which did not change anything.
At 3 p.m., the examination of the text resumes for a few minutes only before all the Nupes formations leave the room. Policy of the empty chair which leaves, in the opposition camp, the few elected members of the Liot group quite alone with those of the National Rally.
Marine Le Pen’s party is taking the opportunity to attack the right, which voted against article 1, accusing LR of having knowingly excluded from the commission its members who had opposed the pension reform. “There are more and more of you on the macronie buoy, but with the weight of your lies, it will sink in 2027”, thus warns Thomas Ménagé (RN).
As during the discussion of the pension reform finally adopted by recourse to 49.3, the presidential majority achieves its ends but at the cost of a political crisis for which it and the left blame each other. June 8 will perhaps mark the final chapter of this tough sequence.
#repeal #dismissed #cost #crisis #opposition