The senators resumed on Saturday the hectic examination of the pension reform, which the government and the majority right in the upper house intend to complete this weekend, despite the battering of a left promising to "not let go".
At midday, after more than two and a half hours of sitting, there were still some 680 amendments to be considered, while the debates must end before the ax set for Sunday midnight.
The government deployed on Friday the great means to accelerate and ensure the holding of a vote, by drawing article 44.3 of the Constitution. The latter allows a single vote on the whole of the bill, without putting to the vote the amendments to which the government is unfavorable.
A "coup of force" and a "scuttling of the Senate", denounced the senatorial left, which however did not lower the weapons and continues to present its proposals and requests for various and varied reports, with the hope of preventing a final vote.
In the absence of being able to debate and vote on each amendment, the senators on the left use each time the full two minutes allocated to present them.
Varying their tones, they began each of their interventions on Saturday by reading the same text addressed to the "coalised rights": "You have decided to devitalize the parliamentary function by adding all the procedures offered to you by the procedure and the Constitution (...) but we are not fooled and neither are the French, we will not let go, we will not let them go".
"You are not fooled, but we are not Nupes", provoked them in return the LR rapporteur of the text, René-Paul Savary.
“You have decided to devitalize the parliamentary function” by “embolizing the debates”, also retorted Chantal Deseyne (LR), castigating “the lefts united by their obstruction who do not want to debate or vote”.
"The repetitive nature of certain arguments can border on obstruction", said in the hemicycle the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, who insisted on the "regularity" of the measures taken to speed up the debates.
"We too have recourse to completely legal procedures," replied Socialist Senator Laurence Rossignol.
Saturday's session, started at 9:30 a.m., notably made it possible to examine an amendment asking to extend to liberal professionals the existing 10% pension increase for parents of at least three children.
This support for large families "is one of our markers, and it was missing in your project", said René-Paul Savary, addressing the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, who unsurprisingly expressed the "favorable opinion " from the executive.
03/11/2023 12:25:32 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
