Purchasing power, pensions, education… Olivier Véran was targeted Thursday evening, during a sometimes heated debate, by representatives of the left as well as the right and the far right, as the first turn of the legislative.
“You are very impatient to fall on me as soon as we talk about pensions”, reacted the Minister in charge of Relations with Parliament, and former Minister of Health and Solidarity, taken to task on this subject by Olivier Faure (Nupes-PS). Olivier Véran, placed between Isabelle Florenne (Democratic Movement) and Brigitte Fouré (UDI), defended the extension of working hours announced by Emmanuel Macron, and the measures already implemented and others to come for the power of ‘purchase.
Freezing of prices, wage increases, tax cuts: the opposition presented their proposals, castigated as unfunded projects by Olivier Véran, who defended Emmanuel Macron’s balance sheet. “The only check we know of this evening is the blank check that Olivier Véran is asking for,” mocked Olivier Faure. “I listen to you Mr. Véran, you said that you were a socialist, I have the impression of seeing an old RPR of the 80s”, launched Ian Brossat (Nupes, PCF).
Rules of the Arccom
One of the most virulent exchanges, however, focused on education, when Jordan Bardella, acting president of the National Rally, accused Minister Pap Ndiaye of having “drawn nauseous, filthy parallels between the French police in the suburbs today and the Vichy police”, to “do ethnic accounting”, to be “openly an extreme leftist, woke, decolonialist militant”. “I find it scandalous”, reacted Olivier Véran.
The debate escalated further, on the question of security and the polemical remarks of Jean-Luc Mélenchon on “the police who kill”. “If there are people on this set who support the police doing justice and restoring the death penalty for a refusal to comply, we don’t,” said Adrien Quatennens (LFI). “Do they have to let the police roll over?” Should the police let themselves be crushed? “, protested Jordan Bardella, also accused of “racism” by Olivier Faure for his remarks linking immigration to delinquency. “I am ashamed of this political class which attacks the police”, chanted the ex-LR Guillaume Peltier (Reconquest!).
On several occasions, the journalists, questioned in particular by the right-wing lawyer Charles Consigny (LR), recalled that the distribution of the participants in the debate (4 Nupes, 3 presidential majority and 3 right and extreme right) met the rules of the Arcom, the audiovisual policeman. “We are not in the politburo”, “it looks like a revolutionary court”, launched Charles de Consigny during exchanges with the left.