Emmanuel Macron meets Wednesday evening at the Elysée Palace with Elisabeth Borne and the main ministers concerned by the pension reform on the eve of a decisive day in Parliament, but does not plan “at this stage” to have it adopted without a vote by a 49.3, we learned from concordant sources in the presidential camp.
The meeting is scheduled after 8:00 p.m. with the ministers of Labor Olivier Dussopt, Public Accounts Gabriel Attal, Relations with Parliament Franck Riester and government spokesman Olivier Vran in particular, said the presidency. It is not a Council of Ministers but a working meeting, it was specified.
Emmanuel Macron had already spoken with the head of government after the Council of Ministers which took place on Wednesday morning.
The President of the Republic is determined that we can go to a vote as the Prime Minister wishes. He wants to make sure that the conditions are met to go there, explained to AFP the entourage of the head of state.
Deputies and senators reached an agreement on Wednesday on a common version of the disputed project, with the most decried measure, the postponement to 64 years of the legal age of retirement.
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Thursday, this text will be submitted to the vote of the Senate, where the right-wing and centrist majority should unsurprisingly approve it, then the National Assembly, where the presidential camp does not have an absolute majority. There, the vote is uncertain: if the right-wing party Les Républicains says it wants to adopt the reform, many rebels in its ranks maintain the suspense on the final outcome.
However, the government, if it assures that it wants to achieve a clear majority, has never ruled out drawing as a last resort Article 49.3 of the Constitution which allows a text to be adopted without a vote by engaging its responsibility.
There should be no decision tonight on 49.3, a macronie executive told AFP, believing that the positions of parliamentarians should be left to settle on the compromise text. At this stage, we are not going towards a 49.3, he insisted, without however excluding it.