After two weeks of discussions, the debates on the pension reform project are entering their last day. Draft evaders and the majority accuse each other of preventing debate on the article on the postponement of the legal retirement age.
The Insoumis want to prolong the debates. The deputies of La France insoumise are virulently calling on the majority this Friday to extend the current debates in the National Assembly on pension reform. They say in particular that they want to discuss article 7 of the project providing for the postponement of the legal retirement age.
“Give up your holidays in Courchevel”, launches the deputy of Essonne Antoine Léaument.
Article 7 of the pension reform bill plans to postpone the start of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 and crystallizes the opposition of a majority of French people to the reform. The debates on this reform project must end this Friday evening at midnight, with the activation by the executive of article 47.1 allowing to limit to 50 days the examination of a text in Parliament.
LFI accuses the majority of enjoying a “right to laziness”
“You advocate the value of work but for you now it is the right to be lazy, because you are closing this weekend, you are in a hurry to leave for your residences”, retorts the deputy of the Somme François Ruffin, adopting the same rhetoric than his colleague.
“You stick two years firm to the French and tomorrow you will be on the planes to join your chalets”, he proclaims again.
These accusations are rejected outright by the President of the National Assembly. “I specify that the calendar of the parliamentary session is fixed annually, that there are periods of suspension which are not periods of vacation”, answers in the hemicycle Yaël Braun-Pivet to François Ruffin.
“We work in our constituencies. It would be really pointless to suggest otherwise,” she says.
Article 7 in the crosshairs
The Insoumis claim to want to address several points that are debated within the bill, including article 7. “It is undoubtedly necessary to plead again for a longer opening of sessions since we have to talk about pension funds, plan retirement savings, shareholders, dividends, inequalities, women, long careers”, calls the deputy of Haute-Garonne Hadrien Clouet.
“We still don’t understand in which direction you want to go,” he laments again.
Thousands of amendments tabled on the left
However, the prospect of being able to attend these exchanges seems increasingly dim. Each side is responsible for these debates constantly postponed during these two weeks of heated debates.
On the one hand, the Insoumis accuse the majority of having had recourse to Article 47.1 and thus limit the duration of the debates, while on the other the majority implores LFI to withdraw the thousands of amendments it tabled and which slow down the discussions.
“I understand that the Supreme Leader has forbidden you [d’aller à l’article 7]”, tackles the deputy MoDem Philippe Vigier in reference to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, while the deputy of the Hautes-Pyrénées Benoît Mournet accuses the Insoumis of practicing an “anti-parliamentary blockade”.
The question of maintaining or not these amendments is debated within the Nupes. Communist deputies withdrew the 350 amendments they had tabled on Thursday, followed by environmentalists and socialists, a decision deemed “incomprehensible” by the rebellious leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon who called not to “rush” towards the item 7.
This Friday in the middle of the afternoon, more than 1,300 amendments must still be studied in the National Assembly before the deputies can address article 7.
