Debates on pension reform start in the Senate, Attal declares "here there is no ZAD, there is only the Republic"

The examination of the pension reform project started on Thursday, March 2, in the Senate, in a much more serene atmosphere than in the National Assembly. At the opening of the discussions, the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal pleaded for “respect”. “I know that here we debate, we respect each other. I know that here there is no ZAD, there is only the Republic,” the minister said.

This first session, chaired by the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher (Les Républicains, LR), started with a “point of order” from the president of the communist, republican, citizen and ecologist group (CRCE), Eliane Assassi, who expressed the “duty” of the left to demonstrate its “strongest opposition in this hemicycle”.

More than 4,700 amendments, battle of procedures, verbal contests… The one hundred and ten hours of discussion planned, a third more than at the Palais Bourbon in February according to the right, will they make it possible to reach the final vote before the March 12 at midnight?

In any case, this is the wish expressed on Wednesday by Gérard Larcher. “The Senate owes citizens and social partners a debate on the entire text”, explained the President of the Senate.

Gabriel Attal launched “a call for compromise between the senatorial majority, which embodies the will for reform, and the presidential majority, which bears the responsibility for reform”.

Country “blocking”

Deprived of a vote of the deputies, the executive counts on the Senate to confer democratic legitimacy on a reform which two thirds of the French (66%) do not want, according to an Odoxa poll.

The exchanges will be organized around the strategic March 7, the date of the “blocking” of the country to which the inter-union calls, against the decline in the retirement age to 64 years. All the unions of the SNCF and the RATP, in particular, want a renewable strike from this date.

This political and social climate is not at all favorable for the government and its majority. Emmanuel Macron’s popularity rating fell six points in February to its lowest level in three years, with 32% of French people satisfied with his action, according to an Ipsos poll for Le Point published on Wednesday. That of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is also down.

Two articles reviewed out of twenty

The deputies, entangled in heated debates punctuated by repeated session incidents, were only able to fully examine two of the twenty articles of the text in two weeks.

It is therefore on the text of the government, barely modified, that the senators will work. Before embarking on the examination on the merits, they will discuss two motions of rejection en bloc presented by the left, then, probably Friday morning, a request for a referendum. All three will surely be pushed back.

But socialists, communists and ecologists intend to “stand together” to oppose a “cobbled together”, “not fair”, “not useful” reform.

Contrary to what happened in the Assembly, left-wing senators want a vote on Article 7, which raises the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. “The French must know who votes and who votes what when it comes to their future,” defends the president of the socialist group Patrick Kanner. The left, however, wants the vote on this key article not to take place until the end of the day of mobilization on March 7.

The right intends to defend its “markers”: return to financial balance and family policy. She thus proposes to grant a “surcharge” of pension to mothers who have a full career. A measure amounting to 300 million euros, watched “with interest” by the government, said the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt.

On the other hand, the Minister of Labor definitively closed the door, Thursday on RTL, to the requests of LR senators on special pension plans, which the government intends to abolish without however touching the “grandfather clause” (which maintains the plans special benefits to employees who already benefit from them).

The senatorial majority also proposes a new CDI formula, exempt from family contributions, to facilitate the hiring of unemployed seniors. The senators are also expecting clarification from the government, first and foremost on long careers, a point which has crystallized the debates in the Assembly.