After nine days of epic debates, the deputies begin their final day of examination of the pension reform on Friday, in an atmosphere which promises to be electric as the chances of addressing the key measure on the postponement of the age are move away.
Debates will resume at 9 a.m. At midnight and wherever the debates on Emmanuel Macron’s flagship reform are, the curtain will fall in the National Assembly and the text will go to the Senate. And this, whether or not the deputies have had time to address the famous article 7, at the heart of the text with its decried postponement from 62 to 64 years of the retirement age.
What about the amendments from the left?
More than 3000 amendments remain to be discussed before this article 7, including a good part coming from the Insoumis. The left alliance Nupes is divided on the advisability of withdrawing them, as pressed by the unions which organized a fifth day of mobilization on Thursday.
In the hemicycle, LFI on Wednesday withdrew “more than a thousand” amendments and the Socialists “90% of theirs”. On Thursday, the Communists did the same with 350 of their own amendments. But Thursday evening the leader of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon deemed this withdrawal “incomprehensible” and called on the deputies not to “rush” to article 7.
Article 7 finally discussed?
Will MPs get to the article on the retirement age? Uncertainty is still total. Otherwise, it would be the first time that the reading of a text is interrupted because the constitutional deadline will have been reached.
“It’s going to be sport,” said an elected Renaissance according to whom “the challenge is who will impose his story? LFI by saying that we purposely do not go to the end of the text, or us? This elected official, who does not despair of arriving at article 7, recalls that the deletion amendments coming from the left and a few LRs would be the first examined. “Rejecting them would amount to a hollow adoption,” he imagines.
The Republicans themselves, who contributed to the rejection of the “senior index” on Wednesday, are blowing hot and cold, with some imposing conditions on long careers to support the reform.
Motion of censure
Finally, on Friday, the motion of censure tabled by the National Rally could be discussed in the evening in the presence of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, according to parliamentary sources. The decision on when to vote will be taken in the morning.
All the other groups assured that they would vote against this motion, denouncing a “political coup”. “A spotlight on their insincerity,” replies Marine Le Pen, according to whom no one really wants a vote on retirement at 64.