The deputies launch into an intense time trial whose deadline is Friday at midnight. It is at this time that they will finish their debates around the government’s pension reform project before going before the senators. Initiated on Monday, February 6, this examination of the bill is considerably prolonged by the some 20,000 amendments submitted, including 17,000 from the deputies of Nupes and 13,000 from the representatives of La France Insoumise alone.
Thus, of the 20 articles included in the bill, so far only two have been put to the vote. The Social Affairs Commission of the National Assembly had already set the tone since it had only been able to review two articles between January 30 and February 1.
A few days later, the examination of the deputies had begun at full speed with a vote against a rejection motion defended by La France Insoumise and another against a referendum motion promoted by the National Group for the bill to be referendum object. What has happened since then? The writing of BFM Business takes stock of the lower house of Parliament less than two days after the end of the debates within it, while this Thursday a new day of mobilization is celebrated.
Article 1 on the end of special regimes is voted on
This is the first major step in this “fast track” legislative process. In fact, the government has opted for the path of a social security financing reform bill (amending the PLFSS) that allows it to limit the duration of parliamentary debate to 50 days. Consequently, if Parliament has not definitively approved the bill before March 26, the government can issue an order to implement the reform.
This method, although authorized and framed by the Constitution, motivated the deputies of the Nupes and in particular the Insoumis to present an exorbitant number of amendments to denounce in the long term a majority that would not respect parliamentary time by pressing it. Even so, these amendments delayed the process of reviewing the text, so much so that the deputies took until February 10 to finally vote on the first article of the bill.
By 181 votes in favor and 163 against, the deputies voted last Friday in favor of article 1, which provides for the end of special diets, despite the hundreds of amendments presented by the Nupes left-wing coalition on this section of the text . As a reminder, the RATP, the Electricity and Gas Industries, the Banque de France, and Clerks and Clerks of Notaries are the various schemes they target.
The deputies have just rejected article 2 on the senior index
In addition to the emblematic measures that are the lowering of the legal retirement age and the extension of the contribution period, it was one of the proposals in the text that drew the most attention. To boost employment for older people in France, which is one of the weakest in Europe, the government floated the idea of an “older people index.” This incentive system would force companies of a certain size to make public the information on the proportion of older people in their workforce, under pain of an economic sanction that could represent 1% of the payroll.
The government suffered its first failure with the rejection on Tuesday of article 2 of the bill by 256 votes against, 203 in favor and 8 abstentions. In detail, companies with more than 1,000 employees should have published this index from next November before the obligation is extended to structures with more than 300 employees from July 2024. The amendments of all the seats had achieved add the threshold for companies with more than 50 employees from July 2025. At the end of the day’s Council of Ministers, government spokesman Olivier Véran deplored a “political” vote that “is not understandable”.
If the various oppositions were delighted with this parliamentary decision against a tool generally described as “useless”, the senior index is definitely not buried and could reappear later in the continuation of the parliamentary shuttle.
Will article 7 on the postponement of the legal age of departure be discussed?
The day after this first “victory”, the inter-union called on the deputies to reject the famous article 7 of the bill that provides for delaying the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
As soon as the text reached the National Assembly, union figures like Laurent Berger or politicians like François Ruffin wanted the debates to move quickly towards this seventh article. Problem: There are still about 11,000 amendments as Nupes announced the withdrawal of 1,000 amendments on Tuesday and several hundred on Wednesday to speed up the process.
Also, Article 7 is not the only section that could be hotly debated among the remaining 18 Articles. Article 8 on long careers, article 9 on hardships or even the tenth on minimum pensions could also give rise to long hours of debate.
Source: BFM TV
