The left-wing senators intend to “push” the debate on the pension reform project, hoping that the text will not be “not put to the vote” for lack of time, explained the leaders of the three groups during a press conference on Friday .
The “mission is to push the debate so that this text is not put to the vote”, warned the president of the CRCE group predominantly communist Eliane Assassi, surrounded by the leaders of the socialists, Patrick Kanner, and the ecologists, Guillaume Gontard. The senators were reacting to the government’s decision on Friday to draw an article from the Constitution to speed up the debates, which are scheduled to last until Sunday.
“Admission of weakness”, “coup de force”
To counter the “methodical opposition” of the left, the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt indeed unsheathed this Friday the constitutional weapon of the single vote before the Senate which will have to decide in one go on the whole project of law. This article 44.3 will allow the Senate to decide by a single vote on the entire reform, retaining only the amendments proposed or accepted by the government, approximately 70 in number on the following articles under discussion, in order to “improve the text” according to the Minister of Labour.
“At the time when 44 paragraph 3 was drawn, there remained 1,000 amendments to present to the Senate. The government decided to pre-empt 70 amendments. This does not prevent from being able to present” the others without debating them, underlined Patrick Kanner. ” President [LR du Sénat Gérard] Larcher told us he would preside over all Sunday proceedings. It is a clue” on the day of the possible vote in the Senate, he noted.
The debates resumed in session with the presentation of the left-wing amendments, without debate or vote, and points of order on the government’s “act of authority if not authoritarianism”, and a debate that had become a “shadow theater (Eric Kerrouche, PS).
Not debated, not voted on… but at least presented
“Admission of weakness”, “coup de force”: the left immediately rose up against this recourse. And intends to reply with its remaining ammunition, namely the thousand amendments that remained under discussion.
If these cannot be debated or voted on, they can however still be simply presented by their authors. A way to save time… and to give hope to the left that the text “is not put to the vote” before the deadline scheduled for Sunday at midnight.