The French government decided to approve the reform of the pension system without submitting it to a final vote in the National Assembly scheduled for this Thursday. Faced with uncertainty about the outcome of putting the Diploma to a referendum, the Prime Minister sought a constitution that would allow the adoption of the Constitution by decree.
When Elizabeth Bourne took to the pulpit, delegates from the left began to sing to formally announce the decision, which was already in the press. The Marseilles Unrelenting while holding placards against raising the statutory retirement age from 62 to 64. It was the most controversial move in the diploma issued by Emmanuel Macron’s administration and led to near-constant strikes in many sectors and thousands of people taking to the streets.
The benches continued to sing and shout as the Prime Minister announced in the Assembly that the government had accepted the passage of Article 49.3 of the Constitution – i.e. without taking the pension reform to a referendum – it was literally shouting. “Uncertainty is just a few votes away”, Elizabeth Bourne explained. “We cannot run the risk of seeing 175 hours of parliamentary debate go down the drain, and we cannot run the risk of the compromise reached by both houses failing.”
Bourne underlined that the government would accept the text resulting from talks between representatives and senators at the Joint Equalities Commission on Wednesday. “On your reform, in the speech of Parliament, I am ready to take my responsibility,” said the Prime Minister.
This argument did not go down well with the opposition benches, who announced that they would move resolutions of impeachment immediately. If any of them are ratified, the law does not go into effect and the government falls.
Marine Le Pen, President of the Bench of the National Union, which was the first to announce a motion of censure and eventually guaranteed to vote in favor of those put forward by the Left parties. “How can the government still inspire a little confidence in the French?”, said the head of the far-right parliament, adding that the use of Article 49.3 represented a “personal failure” of Emmanuel Macron.
Le Pen has always declared herself against reform, but her party has remained relatively unnoticed in parliamentary debates and, unlike the left, has not engaged in street demonstrations. This posture allowed him to present himself to public opinion as a radical and institutionalized opposition—and the strategy seems to have paid off. In several recent polls, the National Union and Le Pen are the most admired by the French during the whole fight over pensions.
However, since the president of Oz Republicanos announced that he would not support any text in this sense, the credibility of the censure motions is unlikely. Even if they come together, the votes of the Left and the Far Right are not enough to topple the administration. “We cannot allow the crisis in our country to deal a death blow to our democracy and our institutions. We will never participate in a radical alliance,” declared Eric Ciotti.
Demonstrators had been at the door of the assembly before the session, but hundreds began to pour into the venue as soon as Bourne announced his decision. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of A França Insubmissa and a key figure in the coalition of leftist parties called NUPES, is one of them. “The National Assembly has the last word, as it is in all parliamentary democracies in the world,” the former presidential candidate protested. “We can see that the president does not have a majority, it is a minority that is broken before our eyes.”
Laurent Berger, head of the French Confederation of Democratic Workers (CFDT), which represents 875,000 workers, told reporters that “there will obviously be new mobilisations, because the opposition is so strong.” Philippe Martínez, general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), called on demonstrators to give a response “appropriate to this insult to the people”. He asked.