MPs still have five days to debate the bill before it is sent to the Senate.
The National Assembly resumes this Monday afternoon the tumultuous examination of the pension reform, under pressure from the street and the unions, who are agitating the threat of a “France at a standstill” from March 7.
The debates restart at 4 p.m. at the Palais-Bourbon, after a slow first week shaken by invectives and outbursts of tension in the hemicycle, even leading to the exclusion for two weeks of a rebellious deputy for a controversial tweet on the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, bearer of the reform.
“Bullshit” of obstruction
The discussions will end Friday at midnight at first reading, whether or not the deputies have completed the examination of the bill, which will then go to the Senate. The debates will be punctuated, Thursday, by a fifth day of action at the call of the inter-union. Drowned under the 15,800 remaining amendments, will the deputies reach at least article 7 on the postponement of the legal age of departure to 64?
This is what the unions are calling for. On Sunday, the general secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger denounced on RTL the “bullshit” of the obstruction, targeting La France insoumise at the origin of the vast majority of the amendments tabled. He also deplored the “lamentable spectacle” in the Assembly, which has “nothing to do with the dignity of the street movement”.
On the mobilization side, the demonstration on Saturday, more family-oriented, attracted between 963,000 and 2.5 million demonstrators according to the sources, and confirms the inter-union in its strategy. After the new day of action Thursday, it raises the specter, if the government and the Parliament were to remain “deaf” to the demands, of a “France at a standstill” from March 7, after the school holidays.
“To block”
“Paralyzing and blocking the country would be counterproductive”, reacted the president of the Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé on BFMTV on Sunday, asking the unions to dialogue “beyond the pension reform on the question of work, job”.
Because on retreats, everyone sticks to their positions. Government spokesman Olivier Véran repeated the line of the executive on Sunday: “necessity” of postponing the legal age to 64 and “listening” to strengthen the “senior index” system during parliamentary debates, in order to encourage companies to keep the over 55s in employment.
It is precisely on the employment of older employees that the deputies will resume their work on Monday, with a flurry of amendments in all camps. The senior index, “it’s decoration, but in the end it doesn’t change anything in philosophy”, tackles the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon offers unions “a new convergence”
The Nupes coalition then intends to defend its tracks of “alternative financing” for pensions, with a new call to tax the “superprofits” of the largest companies, a recurring debate in the Assembly since the summer.
The presidential camp only has a relative majority in the Assembly, but the first votes rather reassured the macronists about the forces present in the hemicycle.
The left relies on the endurance of the street to stand up to the government. Saturday evening on his blog, the LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon proposed to the unions, “a new convergence” with “a call for a rally on a Saturday or Sunday in March to surround the action en masse”.
The RN as an “ideal son-in-law”
For her part, the leader of the RN deputies, Marine Le Pen, who had not called for a demonstration, judged that after the mobilization on Saturday, “the executive (could) not continue to look elsewhere by refusing to hear the French”. In the presidential ranks, many deputies fear that the far right will take advantage of the image reflected in the hemicycle.
“The Bordeaux left and the RN remains on its line of ideal son-in-law”, the risk that Marine Le Pen takes advantage of it and gains points in the perspective of 2027 “terrorizes a lot of people”, notes a Renaissance parliamentary source.
