25 Renaissance elected officials organize themselves in a Whatsapp loop to modify the bill. Often coming from the socialist benches, they assume to be “the little pebble in the shoe of the majority”. With one objective: to no longer be “Playmobil deputies” and to achieve “more fair” raising the retirement age.
Get organized to weigh better. Deputies of the presidential majority have heated up a Whatsapp loop in recent days in an attempt to modify the pension reform project which will arrive next Monday in the hemicycle. Its name sums up their ambition: “Socially yours”.
“We are the little pebble in the shoe of the majority. We are here to improve the text and make it fairer”, summarizes in broad strokes one of its members with BFMTV.com.
Influencing a majority more than ever on the right
Among the 25 deputies who make up this group, there are many former socialists like MP Stella Dupont, relatives of former minister Barbara Pompili or former members of Young with Macron like Ludovic Mendes. It was he who launched this loop, born during the budget debates last fall.
“I said to myself that we had to allow colleagues who had just been elected to discuss and who did not necessarily know who to turn to to defend their ideas”, explains this former executive of the Socialist Party.
With an imperative: to weigh on the debates within a majority whose barycentre has shifted strongly to the right since the last legislative elections. The deputies who lost in June were often from rather left-wing constituencies such as Sonia Krimi or Brigitte Bourguignon.
“Put a helm to the left”
New parliamentarians have often won in territories rather labeled LR, starting with the two spokespersons for the group, Maud Bregeon and Prisca Thévenot, elected in Hauts-de-Seine.
“If we want to put a helm on the left and we really need it, we had to organize ourselves. There is an issue in rebalancing the discourse”, advances one of the deputies “socially yours”.
In an attempt to influence the text, these elected officials have tabled several amendments which seek to identify “shortcomings, holes in the racket”, according to one of them.
Amendments that “open the floodgates”
On the menu: relatively consensual amendments such as the possibility of extending the conditions for buying back terms, internships or studies or even the possibility of reducing the minimum period by 6 months before resuming an activity with a former employer.
But others could cringe in the ranks of the majority such as the possibility of granting “additional terms” to women who have children. One of their amendments still aims to return to the case of people who started working between the ages of 16 and 20 and who for some of them will have to contribute 44 years and not 43 years like the rest of the employees.
“Improvements, yes, but let’s beware of all the compensatory measures which could reduce the financial effects of the reform”, answers the deputy Robin Reda who defends tooth and nail the current version of the reform.
In the ranks of the macronie, it was also hardly appreciated that the dissensions within the majority are spread out in broad daylight, like the words of Barbara Pompili, ex-minister macronist.
“We cannot make a reform against the population”, had thus advanced the deputy of the Somme on BFMTV on January 25, explaining that she could not vote for the reform “at this stage”.
Not in “the sling”
About fifteen Renaissance deputies refuse for the moment to vote in favor of the pension reform. What give an air of slingshot as at the time of François Hollande. Between 2012 and 2017, no less than forty socialist deputies, nicknamed the slingers, had regularly opposed the policy pursued by the President of the Republic.
Elisabeth Borne also sought to close the ban on criticism during the group meeting of Renaissance deputies, ensuring that she did not “doubt for a second that the majority is united” on the decline in the retirement age.
“We are neither in the sling nor in the fight. We are quite simply carriers of fights and people who are not represented enough”, assures the deputy Ludovic Mendes.
“Not Playmobil deputies”
It must be said that the circumstances are also very different between the Hollande five-year term and the second term of Emmanuel Macron. Not one of the deputies members of this loop seeks to bring down the government as was the case with some of the socialist rebels.
“We are not Playmobil deputies. We simply do our job by asking ourselves questions”, further justifies one of the deputies who are members of this Whatsapp loop.
Since the start of the legislature, only two Macronist deputies have expressed a vote “against” or an abstention.
