The Senate, dominated by the right, adopted on Saturday March 11, late in the evening, the pension reform project by 195 votes for, and 112 against. This vote took place on the day of the seventh day of mobilization against the text, which was marked by a sharp drop in the number of demonstrators. It was eagerly awaited by the government and allows it to give parliamentary legitimacy to its highly contested reform, and to give impetus for its final adoption.
As of Friday, the government had deployed major means to accelerate and ensure the holding of a vote in the Senate, by drawing article 44.3 of the Constitution. The latter makes possible a single vote on the entire bill, without putting to the vote the amendments to which the government is unfavorable.
"An important step has been taken" welcomed, Saturday evening to Agence France-Presse, Elisabeth Borne. “There is a majority in Parliament” to vote for it, assured the Prime Minister, in an allusion to the much tighter vote which is announced in the National Assembly.
The executive hopes to see the reform definitively adopted after a chaotic parliamentary journey. Negotiations for the post-Senate have already started behind the scenes and will be in full swing on Wednesday from 9 a.m. in a joint joint committee (CMP), bringing together seven deputies, seven senators, and as many alternates in a closed room of the Palais Bourbon. The objective of the CMPs is to reach a compromise on the measures that the National Assembly and the Senate have not voted on in the same terms.
However, the deputies, faced with the obstruction of part of the left, could not come to the end in February of the examination of the reform, and did not adopt it. This means that the discussion on Wednesday will be broad, even if the heart of the text, the decline in the starting age from 62 to 64, will not move. He will also be at the center of a new day of mobilization of opponents.
Presidential and right camp have the hand in CMP, with respectively five and four holders each.
Time for the final vote on Thursday?
In the best of scenarios for the executive, if deputies and senators reach an agreement in CMP, this must be validated Thursday, March 16 from 9 a.m. in the Senate, then at 3 p.m. in the National Assembly. This last vote, if it is positive, will be worth definitive adoption by the Parliament.
But the executive counts and recounts its troops at the Palais-Bourbon, as well as the LR votes on which it can count, in the absence of an absolute majority for the macronists. Especially since some of them are hesitant, like the former minister Barbara Pompili who does not want to vote for the reform, despite the risk of being excluded from the Renaissance group.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, however, seeks to avoid a 49.3, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote.
