The French Constitutional Council recognized the legal pension reform and approved the increase in the retirement age to 64 years.
As transmits Day.Az with reference to RBCaccording to AFP.
The judges of the council had to determine whether the content of the law and the manner in which it was enacted were in accordance with the Constitution.
The pension reform was adopted by the government on March 16, it provides for raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
Both supporters and opponents of the reform – Prime Minister Elizabeth Born, and parliamentary factions – the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), Marine Le Pen’s “National Association”, a group of socialist senators, “greens” and communists.
In its appeal, the NUPES faction requested “to block the entire text” on three grounds – based on the procedure used by the government; the incompleteness of the information provided by the government to legislators; the existence of provisions in the bill that do not fall within the specific scope of the budget bill. The “National Association” brought almost the same arguments, adding one more claim – the government did not submit an amendment along with the amendment of the law on the budget, which should have balanced the financing of social obligations. The appeal by socialist, green and communist senators also raised questions before the court about the legitimacy of the government using an “unprecedented” set of tools to “force parliament to pass a law,” writes Le Monde.
There are two main complaints about the adoption of the reform: the government introduced the reform of the pension system not as a separate bill, but as amendments to the draft budget on social security, using the draft budget as a special tool to push through the reform, and abused the opportunity to adopt bills without consideration by parliament. The use of the budget bill has been described as an “abuse of procedure” by left-wing MPs and an “improper legislative tool” by far-right MPs.
The way the government chose to introduce the reform allowed it to first limit the debate in both houses of parliament on it to 50 days, and then allowed it to use Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the changes without a vote by deputies. If the pension reform were introduced as a separate bill, the government would not be able to limit the debate time, thus the Cabinet of Ministers “encroached on the clarity and honesty of the parliamentary debate”, which is a constitutional requirement, Le Monde cites the claims of opponents of the reform.