Emerging from the tumult experienced in the National Assembly, the government was almost impatient to see the pension reform project move towards the Senate, deemed to be more balanced, from Tuesday, February 28. Until a cannonball whistles near Matignon. Friday 24, during a warm-up with the Senate group presidents, Elisabeth Borne hangs up with Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the senators Les Républicains (LR). Never before, in several months of negotiations, had the Vendéen suggested extinguishing the special diets from 2025. Now he is about to agitate the hypothesis in The Parisianprompting this unexpected opening from the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, on Sunday on BFM-TV: ” Why not. »
In the government, everyone has in mind that such a provocation would give fuel to the social mobilization of March 7, the date on which the unions announced that they would bring the country to a standstill. And would risk, by ricochet, to make “explode” the heart of the project on the legal age of departure. At Matignon, one even wonders if the special regimes do not announce themselves as the senatorial version of “long careers”, the interminable subject of negotiation imposed by the right of the Palais-Bourbon on Elisabeth Borne.
Tuesday at the end of the day, relief dominated for a time in the government. The Senate Social Affairs Committee approved the text, adding around fifteen amendments carried by the LR majority and its centrist allies. But – surprise – without accelerating the end of special diets. However, this should be debated in public session, on the basis of an amendment from the LR group.
Burned, the executive power thus contemplates the Luxembourg Palace as a Roman curia, where the future of its reform lies in the hands of a small handful of men – the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, the leader LR Bruno Retailleau, his centrist Union counterpart Hervé Marseille. At first glance, Matignon and the Senate do share a common interest: to debate the substance of the text until the decried article 7, which postpones the legal age of departure from 62 to 64 years old, contrary to what prevailed in the Assembly national.
“The basis of an agreement is on the table”
The hope of the majority is to adorn its law with the anointing of the vote; that of the Upper House, to reap the laurels of a successful parliamentary debate. “The deputies of La France insoumise put the Senate in majesty, they pass their turn and justify bicameralism”savored Hervé Marseille at the start of the week. “We consider that the basis of an agreement is on the table”already advanced the spokesman of the government, Olivier Véran, Thursday, while at the Agricultural Show this weekend, Emmanuel Macron invited the Senate to “enrich the text”.
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