Hard blow for the Liot deputies (Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories). This Wednesday, the National Assembly’s Social Affairs Committee voted on the independent group’s bill without its article 1, which provided for the repeal of the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64 years. The key provision was deleted by 38 votes to 34. The deputies then adopted the bill, thus stripped of its substance. But the text, the examination of which continues, is not buried for all that.
It must now be examined in public session in the National Assembly on June 8. “The hemicycle will debate the text as it was adopted by the committee, that is to say without the flagship provision which justified its existence”, explains Benjamin Morel, professor of public law at the university Paris-II-Pantheon-Assas.
To reintroduce the repeal of the lowering of the legal age to 64, the opposition will have to table amendments. “The risk is that these amendments will be declared inadmissible by the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, under Article 40 of the Constitution”, warns the lecturer. “I will take my responsibilities”, assured Yaël Braun-Pivet on Tuesday, after being criticized in her own camp for not having blocked the text earlier.
Article 40 provides that “proposals and amendments made by members of Parliament are not admissible when their adoption would result either in a reduction of public resources or the creation or aggravation of a public office”. For amendments, this preliminary filter via article 40 is up to the President of the National Assembly, indicates Benjamin Morel.
She may also delegate this power to the Chairman of the Finance Committee. This hypothesis is however very unlikely, the position being occupied by the deputy LFI Éric Coquerel. Seized by elected representatives of the majority calling on him to block in the name of the Constitution, the latter gave the green light on Tuesday to the examination of the bill to repeal the retirement age at 64, deeming it “admissible “.
The triggering of Article 40 by the President of the National Assembly would have the effect of preventing a vote in the hemicycle, where the balance of power would be less favorable to the presidential camp than in committee.
In committee, the opposition had tried to obstruct the examination of the text. “If we don’t have time to discuss the whole text, it will come back to the initial state in session [le 8 juin, NDLR], there may be an interest in doing that”, hoped the deputy LFI Alexis Corbiere. The left, LFI at the forefront, has therefore tabled more than 3,000 amendments to Article 2, which proposes the meeting of a “funding conference” for pensions.
In the event of invocation of Article 40 by the President of the National Assembly, the deputies of the Liot group finally let the threat of a new motion of censure hover. “If we table a motion of censure at one time or another again, it is this time to completely overthrow the government”, threatened the president of the Liot group in the National Assembly, Bertrand Pancher, guest of Public Senate on Tuesday. On March 20, the motion of censure filed by the Liot group was rejected by 9 votes.