The Senate with a right-wing majority voted on Saturday evening for the extinction of several special regimes, one of the most sensitive measures of the pension reform project, as pressure mounts in the streets and businesses before the mobilization of March 7.
Electricians and gas workers, concerned like the RATP by this disappearance of their regime, began a renewable strike on Friday. It leads to reductions in electricity production in several nuclear power plants, without causing cuts for customers.
“If Emmanuel Macron does not want a France at a standstill and a dark week in energy, it would be better for him to withdraw his reform”, warned Sébastien Ménesplier, secretary general of CGT Energie. “We will be capable of anything,” warned Fabrice Coudour, Federal Secretary.
On tour in Africa, the head of state said on Saturday that he had “not much new to say”.
Gabriel Attal raised his voice against the unions: it is “the French that they will block” and “the workers that they will bring to their knees”, declared the Minister of Public Accounts, on the sidelines of a visit to the Salon de l’Agriculture, calling on opponents of the reform to “responsibility”.
The mobilization of March 7 against the postponement from 62 to 64 of the legal retirement age promises to be massive.
According to police sources, the intelligence services expect between 1.1 and 1.4 million demonstrators throughout France.
The inter-union will meet on Tuesday evening to decide on the next steps: “there is no gravel between us”, assured France Inter on Saturday the secretary general of FO Frédéric Souillot. “There will be general assemblies which will decide on the renewal or not” of the movement on the sites on strike.
In an interview with Le Parisien, the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, a former socialist, defended a “left-wing reform which could have been carried out by a social-democratic government”.
The left, which has largely occupied the field in the Senate since the start of the debates on Thursday, argued all day against the first article of the government bill which provides for the gradual extinction of five special regimes (electricity and gas industries, RATP, Banque de France, notary clerks and employees, members of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council). The right being almost absent from the discussion.
“You want to obstruct, we don’t”, released the leader of senators LR Bruno Retailleau on Saturday.
“You have decided to border a major sector of our energy sovereignty”, launched the president of the PS group Patrick Kanner to the address of the Minister of Labor. “You are going to go down in the history of the gravediggers of our social protection”.
It is expected that agents recruited from September 2023 will be affiliated to the common law scheme for old-age insurance.
Bruno Retailleau wants these special schemes to be abolished for current employees as well, but his proposal will be examined later.
The government is against, and its amendment could be rejected, for lack of support from the centrists.
For the left, the end of special regimes is “an ideological and demagogic proposal”, which will not generate financial gain.
The trades concerned “are they as painful yesterday as today?”, retorted the general rapporteur Elisabeth Doineau (Centrist Union). “We must open our eyes, we are asking for efforts from all French people, whoever they are”.
The debates will continue on Sunday on article 2, also sensitive, concerning the employment of seniors.
The climate hitherto very balanced was tense on Saturday evening, around an imbroglio on the publication of an “opinion” of the Council of State on the bill, insistently requested by the left. The Minister of Labor assuring him that it is a “note” which does not have to be published.
“I thought I understood that I was not in the National Assembly”, replied Mr. Dussopt when the socialist Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie questioned his “sincerity”.
Acerbic exchange also between Mrs. de La Gontrie, who launched on the right “you have not done anything for two days, we have been working”, and the rapporteur LR René-Paul Savary. “You prefer the effects of the platform to the efficiency of the work”, he retorted, praising the constancy of the senatorial majority on the question of pensions.
The fit of tension was brief, far from the permanent heckling that had prevailed in the National Assembly. In a forum at the JDD, four former presidents of the Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, Claude Bartolone, Jean-Louis Debré and François de Rugy have also denounced “a distressing spectacle”, calling for “respect the National Assembly and its president “.
05/03/2023 00:50:03 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
