The Political Council of La France insoumise (LFI) “solemnly” calls on the “senators of the Nupes” to “do everything to prevent the adoption of retirement at 64 in the Senate”, in a statement made public on Tuesday.
After two weeks of stagnation in the Assembly, marked by a barrage of amendments tabled by the LFI group, the reform project will arrive in the Senate in committee on February 28, then in the hemicycle on March 2.
The Senate has no elected LFI, but three left-wing groups (PS, CRCE with a communist majority, and ecologists), whose members were not elected under the label of Nupes, the coalition formed for the last legislative.
Socialist senator boss Patrick Kanner promised that raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 would be debated and put to a vote in the Senate in March.
Left-wing senators could formalize their strategy during a press conference at the start of the examination of the text.
“I did not wait for LFI to explain to me that the reform had to be rejected. Everyone must stay a little in their place”, warns the leader of the environmental group Guillaume Gontard.
The senators on the left have planned to table several motions in public session to reject the text, send it back to committee, or request a referendum, but they are unlikely to succeed in the hemicycle dominated by the right.
During a meeting on Tuesday by videoconference, they agreed not to prevent the debates from going as far as Article 7 on the postponement of the legal age, as confirmed by participants to AFP.
“We will go to article 7, I do not see how we would not go,” said Guillaume Gontard. “In the Senate, it’s a little more laid back, a little more on the merits”.
A position confirmed by a source in the socialist group. “We want to discuss everything,” she insists, criticizing the executive’s recourse to article 47-1 of the Constitution, which limits the duration of the debates.
“It’s still incredible that for a reform to which it is so attached, the government is doing everything it can to ensure that we discuss it as little as possible,” she complains.
According to a source within their group, some Socialists have raised the idea of ??going to the final vote on the text, to clarify the positions of all the senators, but the majority do not want it, seeing it as a bad eye a probable adoption by the upper house.
In the session, the environmentalists will present “about 500 amendments”, according to Mr. Gontard, in particular on the “taxation of dividends and superprofits”. The Socialists are still fine-tuning their amendments for consideration.
But the left-wing elected representatives of both chambers are also looking to the streets, and the call for massive strikes on March 7.
LFI is developing the actions it will put in place in the coming weeks, including a fund to finance strikes, speaking out in public places to “mobilize as many people as possible”, or calls to close town halls “in solidarity”.
“March 7 will be an important moment,” agrees Mr. Gontard.
02/21/2023 16:27:10 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
