By opening its parliamentary “niche” with a proposed law on endometriosis, the RN finally intends to achieve a parliamentary victory in the Assembly by cornering its adversaries, who are wondering about the strategy to adopt in the face of a consensual text.
These days reserved for minority groups in the Assembly have often turned into a headache for the government and the presidential camp, several times defeated because of their relative majority. This season, the RN deputies, who had failed last year, will open the ball on October 12 in the hemicycle.
And the group intends to open the session with a proposal that is particularly difficult for its political adversaries to reject: granting women with endometriosis “exempt” long-term condition (ALD) status, “totally covered by health insurance “.
It was “one of Marine Le Pen’s central proposals” during the 2022 presidential election, insists Jean-Philippe Tanguy, MP and author of the text. But the proposal was also put forward by LFI MP Clémentine Autain who had a resolution adopted unanimously in the Assembly in January 2022.
“The National Rally is in a strategy of trivialization,” denounced Monday the boss of the environmentalist deputies Cyrielle Chatelain, on behalf of the left-wing Nupes alliance.
“We will see how we react to this niche but in no case (…) there will be a common position between us and the National Rally,” she insisted.
Criticizing a “crude operation” by the far-right party to “correct its image”, Clémentine Autain called on the Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau to issue a decree which would ratify the provisions of her resolution, before the examination of the RN text .
“If this decree comes, so much the better,” replies Jean-Philippe Tanguy.
“The RN niche is complicated,” recognizes a socialist deputy, who also hopes for a government decree. Otherwise “we will abstain, we will never give the RN a victory”, he assures.
In the meantime, the prospect of having to take a position on this text is agitating the presidential camp in the Assembly.
The question was raised during a meeting of the group’s office on Monday, with several avenues put forward, such as rewriting the text by amendments to adopt a different version, with other measures requested by the associations, or simply rejecting it. The group is due to address the issue in its weekly meeting next Tuesday.
“We are very happy to sometimes have the votes of the RN (…) we cannot say indefinitely that it only works in one direction”, estimates another member of the majority.
“I am not voting for any text from the RN. It will be a little painful but we have been solid during the previous niches,” says Renaissance deputy Marc Ferracci.
“We are not sectarian (…) we will examine these texts with responsibility,” declared the president of the MoDem group Jean-Paul Mattei at a press conference.
“There are always political recoveries,” regrets Priscilla Saracco, general director of Endomind, a French association fighting endometriosis.
“The ALD has a real positive impact,” she insists, hoping for a reaction from the ministry. “It’s complicated for patients to find themselves behind all this political jargon and to understand why there is still no concrete progress.”
In addition to endometriosis, RN deputies aim to achieve success on a resolution to grant political asylum to Julian Assange, also requested by Nupes deputies, or on the abolition from 2024 of the Arenh, a mechanism which forces EDF to sell low-cost electricity to its competitors, requested by deputies from several sides.
A victory on any text would be an event, the Assembly having until now always rejected RN texts.
“Apart from a few courageous individuals, we can fear a new sectarianism which leaves us wondering”, however tempered Jean-Philippe Tanguy on Tuesday, believing that the most “important” was that this was “severely condemned by the French in all the polls” .
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19/09/2023 18:21:49 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
