Article 38, rewrite the amendment and the anger of the left. The senators got involved on the night of Tuesday, March 7 to Wednesday, March 8 in a bitter parliamentary battle over article 7 of the pension reform, which provides for the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
Beginning around 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, the debates took another turn when, at 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group, requested recourse to article 38 of the Senate Regulations. A “closure” of the debates on the amendments to the article, presented by the left, approved by a show of hands by the parliamentarians.
“The flies have changed donkeys”
This is the first time Rule 38 of the Senate Rules has been used since it was revised in 2015.
Immediate anger of socialists, communists and environmentalists. “What a shame! (…) You let yourself be gagged by article 47-1 of the Constitutionnow they want to muzzle the opposition,” denounced socialist Patrick Kanner.
“A historic day of mobilization, on article 7, the most important, you decide to gag Parliament, censor the Senate,” also accused the president of the environmental group Guillaume Gontard.
“Resorting to this procedure is an act of weakness. It is an attack on democracy!” Elianne Assassi (PCF) also declared herself.
“You have used the resources of the regulation to make your opposition heard. The regulation is the same for everyone. Now we are using the regulation to make another voice heard. The flies have changed donkeys,” argued Hervé Marseille (center). Union)
The Left Strikes Back
This first “coup” was followed very quickly, only twenty minutes later, by a second maneuver by the Republicans. This set fire to the gunpowder. Meeting in committee, the LR senators have proposed an amendment to rewrite Article 7.
“Its adoption would bring down more than 1,100 amendments,” René-Paul Savary explained in the chamber.
To avoid this second “coup d’état”, the left has decided to present a large number of “subamendments” so as not to reduce the window of discussion on the postponement of the legal retirement age.
Therefore, discussions were suspended while these subamendments were considered in committee. But these were declared inadmissible.
A “deal” respected, a timing that questions
Before the arrival of the text in the chamber last week, the left and Les Républicains had made “a deal”: no examination of article 7 before the social mobilization this Tuesday, acceleration of the debates as of Wednesday the 8th. So much so, it only took a few tens of minutes for the right to use the parliamentary arms at its disposal.
But time issues are gone. “Is that the response of the Senate right to 3.5 million people in the streets?” asks socialist Rémi Cardon on Twitter.
This Tuesday, at least 1.28 million people marched in the streets to protest the pension reform. In many cities, mobilization is stable or increasing.
The unions, which are risking everything against the government against the pension reform, hailed a “historic mobilization” and announced two new days of mobilization.
Source: BFM TV
