This is a decisive first step for the government’s highly controversial pension reform plan. The senators, mostly on the right, completed, on Tuesday, February 28, the examination in committee of the text. Several amendments were retained, in particular in favor of mothers and the employment of seniors. The senators will now meet, Thursday afternoon, for the kick-off of the debates in the hemicycle.
Deprived of a vote of the National Assembly by the obstruction of the deputies of La France insoumise, the executive counts on the Senate to confer democratic legitimacy on a reform which two thirds of the French (66%) do not want, d ‘after an Odoxa survey. The next day of mobilization, March 7, promises to be very popular and all the SNCF unions are calling for a strike that can be extended from this date.
In the meantime, the debates in the Senate, renowned for its hushed climate, could contrast with the strong tensions experienced by the National Assembly. The amendments approved Tuesday in committee will have to be voted on again in session, as required by the rule applicable to budgetary texts. Several have been retained. One, considered essential by the right, aims to give a “surcharge” to mothers who have a full career. The senators also propose a new CDI formula, exempt from certain social security contributions, to facilitate the hiring of seniors.
The executive has multiplied in recent days the gestures of openness towards the right, the majority in the hemicycle. “I hope that the Senate can enrich” the text, President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday in the spans of the Agricultural Show. “We will listen to the Senate’s proposals and we will find a way together,” said Elisabeth Borne on Monday, whose popularity rating fell another two points in February to 29%, according to the Odoxa poll.
The head of government also said she was ready, on Tuesday, in Elle magazine, to study “wage bonuses” for women “before the third child”, a new hand extended to the Republicans.
For his part, the president of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, affirmed Monday, in an interview with Agence France-Presse, that his group “will not be one-upmanship”. In the National Assembly, the government had a lot to do with the LR deputies, in particular Aurélien Pradié, since dismissed from his position as number two of the Republicans. This does not prevent the deputy from Lot from remaining very virulent against his party, which he accused, on Tuesday on France Inter, of being “an accomplice of the government” in the debate on pensions.
The senatorial right can hardly change its mind by not voting for a reform that it has been calling for for several years. Bruno Retailleau has, moreover, announced to see the Prime Minister again on Wednesday with Gérard Larcher, the LR president of the Senate.
The deputies, embroiled 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 Social Affairs Committee of the Senate worked, under the leadership of its general rapporteur Élisabeth Doineau, centrist Macron-compatible, and the rapporteur for the Old Age branch René- Paul Savary, the “Monsieur Retraite” of the LR group. LR and centrists recognize “differences” between them on certain subjects, such as long careers or special pension schemes, but are confident in their ability to “overcome them”.
The Senate has “a real card to play” in relation to the National Assembly by showing itself as “a responsible counter-power and respectful of sensitivities”, we emphasize on the side of Petit Luxembourg. But, with nearly a hundred senators, the left intends to make its opposition heard. The three groups – PS, CRCE with a communist and environmentalist majority – will present their strategy together on Wednesday.
“We want the 20 articles of the law to be addressed,” said socialist leader Patrick Kanner in an interview with Les Echos newspaper on Sunday. The left alliance Nupes continues to multiply meetings. “We don’t give up, we’re here,” chanted activists in Amiens on Monday evening.
In the street, the showdown will harden. The inter-union called “to seize March 8, International Day of Struggle for Women’s Rights, to denounce everywhere the major social injustice of this pension reform against women”. In the Senate, the debates will end on Sunday, March 12. If at midnight, the senators have not voted on the entire text, it will still be sent to a joint joint committee, which brings together seven deputies and seven senators.
Consult our file: Pensions: the big bang