The Chairman of the Finance Committee judged the text of the Liot group to return to retirement at age 62 admissible. For the macronists, it contravenes article 40 of the Constitution which stipulates that any bill must be financed.
An unsurprising decision. Éric Coquerel announced this Tuesday morning that the bill to repeal the pension reform is admissible. Without much hope, the presidential majority hoped that the rebellious put a stop to this text which puts it in embarrassment by relaunching the debate on the decline in the retirement age.
“I have decided to make it admissible” argued the Chairman of the Finance Committee (La France insoumise) during a press conference, relying in particular “on the right of parliamentary initiative” and “the right of opposition”.
Article 40 at the heart of the discussions
For the presidential majority, the text of the Liot group which brings together former macronists, ex-socialists and centrists, does not comply with the Constitution and should therefore not be debated. This is called inadmissibility.
Article 40 of the Constitution stipulates that any bill which presents a new financial burden for the State must be financially compensated. On paper, this is indeed the case with this text.
Problem: the Renaissance deputies who want to turn the page on pensions definitively do not consider this method of financing sustainable.
“It’s really not substantive work. We are not going to increase the packet of cigarettes to 100 euros, no, to pay the pensions of our elders? Frankly …”, annoyed last week a deputy of the Finance Commission with BFMTV.com.
For Yaël Braun-Pivet, “very clear” that the text is “inadmissible”
His Social Affairs counterpart Fadila Khattabi had also split a letter last week asking him to look into the admissibility of this reform. It contains a first article which repeals retirement at age 64 and a second article which creates new taxes on tobacco and refers to the organization of a “major financing conference” to “consider new ways of financing” pension funds.
“If he fully fulfills his institutional mission, Éric Coquerel should declare the bill, or at the very least article 1, inadmissible, it is very clear”, advanced for his part this Tuesday morning, a few hours before the decision of the chairman of the Finance Committee, Yaël Braun-Pivet on France 2.
The showdown far from over
“I want to continue to be a finance president for everyone and not just a partisan,” said the chairman of the finance committee, denouncing “a lot of pressure lately, including from the executive”.
“Nothing” “forces me” to “be more severe than the office of the National Assembly” which validated the Liot bill at the end of April, again recalled the rebellious.
Éric Coquerel also recalled that recourse to Article 40 had been extremely rare in recent years. It was thus only used once during the last mandate by self-referral to the number 1 of the commission, Éric Woerth, then LR.
However, the parliamentary battle is far from over. It is now the turn of the Social Affairs Committee to take up the bill. It can adopt it in its initial version, reject it or modify it by deleting article 1.
What give back the hand to Yaël Braun-Pivet who could for his part activate article 40 and stop dead the discussions to repeal the pension reform. The boss of the Liot group meanwhile mentioned “the hypothesis” of a motion of censure if “the rights of the opposition were” flouted “.