Emmanuel Macron invited the leaders of his majority Thursday morning for a consultation meeting at the start of a decisive and uncertain day for his pension reform which must be submitted successively to the vote of the Senate and the National Assembly. The President of the Republic has invited party leaders and group leaders from the presidential camp to the National Assembly, as well as its president Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Elysee said, as he faces a dilemma: go to an uncertain vote or engage Rule 49.3.
After weeks of fierce debates and negotiations under high tension, Emmanuel Macron's extremely unpopular pension reform should have its parliamentary epilogue on Thursday March 16, with suspense still full on the outcome of the vote scheduled for the afternoon. in the National Assembly. Late Wednesday evening, after new ministerial consultations, the Head of State made it known that he wanted a vote on this reform, rather than using the procedure of article 49.3, often compared to a passage in force . But "nothing is decided," said a source within the executive.
During the day, a compromise sealed between seven deputies and seven senators, after more than eight hours of debate behind the closed doors of a joint joint committee (CMP), had opened the way to a vote in front of the two assemblies for this backward project. at age 64 the retirement age.
The text tied up in a small committee will be examined from 9 a.m. in the Senate, dominated by the right, where the favorable outcome of the vote is hardly in doubt. But it is above all towards the Palais-Bourbon that all the spotlights will be shone from 3 p.m., as the outcome of the ballot is still uncertain there. The government is dependent on the right-wing deputies of the Les Républicains party, who are divided and much more skeptical of the reform than their fellow senators. To the point that the shadow still hangs over a recourse to the constitutional weapon of 49.3, which allows a text to pass without a vote unless a motion of censure is adopted.
The President of the Republic "wants to ensure that the conditions are met" to go to a vote, said the Elysée, while the counts of each other always come to the same conclusion: the outcome will be decided. except for a few votes. The consultations will continue on Thursday, it was said in his entourage.
Emmanuel Macron plays very big on this parliamentary sequence. The rest of his second five-year term and his ability to reform France depend on it. The presidential camp does not have an absolute majority in the Assembly. And the concessions granted to the LR deputies, in particular on their hobbyhorse of the long career device, did not dispel doubts about the voting intentions of the deputies of this undisciplined group.
The deputy of the Territoire de Belfort Ian Boucard, who thus estimates "between 15 and 20" the number of opponents to the text among his LR colleagues, explained after a meeting of his group on Wednesday evening that he "continues to vote against" because he is "against raising the retirement age". "It is better to have 49.3 than no reform at all", estimated for his part the boss of LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, very favorable to the text, as if to play down the use of this procedure, the use of which on Thursday would be the hundredth since the beginning of the Fifth Republic.
The opposition would not fail to qualify the absence of a vote as an undemocratic act which, according to the union leaders, would be likely to harden the social movement. "Nothing is over", warned the leader of the Insoumis deputies Mathilde Panot, announcing that her group would vote Thursday in favor of the motion to reject the reform tabled by the small group of independent deputies Liot in the Assembly. "And then we will continue with all the tools at our disposal: referral to the Constitutional Council, motion of censure and the rest we will tell you afterwards," she said.
This reform "is disconnected from the concrete reality of work", insisted the general secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger. But the movement is showing some signs of running out of steam. The demonstrators are less numerous in the streets and in crucial sectors like transport, the strikes do not last or are little followed.
At a meeting in Chevilly-Larue on Wednesday evening, the leader of the left Jean-Luc Mélenchon sought to prevent any resignation among his troops. “We are the force because we are the many. […] Don't be robbed,” he encouraged them.
