The battle against pension reform has barely begun in the streets when the battle in Parliament is already looming, which promises to be just as unpredictable. for the executive. Three years after the reform which aimed to establish a “universal pension by points”, abandoned on the altar of the health crisis, the government finds itself again confronted with a major union mobilization with the presence, Thursday, January 19, of 1.12 million people in the streets, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and more than two million according to the CGT. Object of the dispute? The reform project which aims, in particular, to extend the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
If, in February 2020, Edouard Philippe had to use article 49, paragraph 3 of the Constitution despite his plethoric majority to have his text adopted without a vote, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, was this time entrusted with the heavy task to defend its reform with a relative majority of only 248 elected members – out of the 289 required in the National Assembly.
Like her predecessor, she will find herself facing a united left – and this time galvanized by union unity. The New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) very early on showed its intention to defeat by all means this flagship reform of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term. The president of the group La France insoumise (LFI), Mathilde Panot, threatened, in October 2022, to reproduce the parliamentary obstruction carried out in 2020. “The last time, we were seventeen “rebellious” parliamentarians and had tabled 17,000 amendments. Today we are seventy-five…”
The new national secretary of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, Marine Tondelier, promised on Thursday morning a “National Assembly transformed into ZAD”. “There will be no parliamentary debate, there will be parliamentary filibuster”deplores in advance the deputy Horizons du Nord, Paul Christophe, referring to the examination of the text which arrives in the Hemicycle on February 6.
“Truncated legislative debate”
Wanting to protect itself from this threat, the government dug up an article of the Constitution which had never been used for a reform of this nature until now: article 47, paragraph 1. It frames the conditions and deadlines for review of social security financing bills (PLFSS). In the fall, the executive had considered going through an amendment to the PLFSS, before giving up under the pressure of its relative majority. It is ultimately through a bill amending the financing of social security (PLFRSS) – the initial text of which was adopted in December without a vote after five 49.3 – that the executive intends to carry out its reform. With a found interest: to go as quickly as possible in the parliamentary process.
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