The pension reform project will be presented to Parliament in the form of an amending budget for social security. A maneuver not without ulterior motive.
SourceAFP
© QUENTIN DE GROEVE / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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Lhe LFI deputies denounced “attacks on the rights of Parliament”. Environmentalists have pointed to a “new level” crossed. The boss of the deputies of the French Communist Party (PCF), André Chassaigne, crushed “a crude maneuver, worthy of enemies of democracy”. The qualifiers of the opposition are not lacking to castigate the way in which the government intends to present its pension reform to the Assembly.
This bill, presented to the Council of Ministers on Monday January 23, will in reality take the form of a bill for the financing of social security amending for 2023 (PLFSSR). This type of text is subject to very specific rules and in particular allows the government to use Article 47.1 of the Constitution. If it is today unknown to the general public, it allows in particular to limit the debates in Parliament to 50 days.
In detail, the Constitution explains that “if the National Assembly has not decided on the first reading within twenty days after the filing of a bill, the government seizes the Senate”. The text would then be transmitted to the Senate – with a majority on the right – in its initial version, with however amendments if some could be adopted. The senators would then have 15 days to decide.
The two chambers of Parliament would then have 15 additional days to agree, otherwise “the provisions of the draft can be implemented by ordinance”. It never happened.
A procedure that questions
If the government were to use this article 47.1, it would be a first. But just the use of an amending budget to pass a text of such magnitude puts the left in all its states. An amending budget is used to modify the revenue and expenditure forecasts for the year, not to “impose a fundamental reform” affecting the retirement age, indignant Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI group.
“Most of the measures have an impact, a consequence on the Social Security accounts”, justified the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.
According to The chained Duckthe President of the Constitutional Council, Laurent Fabius, said his vigilance, citing in particular the creation of an “index” to measure the employment of seniors: “Anything that is outside the financial field can be considered as a budgetary jumper” and censored.
READ ALSODo we really need to reform pensions?
20 days to consider the bill in the Assembly
Above all, this tight schedule is perceived by the left as an “obstructing the freedom of parliamentarians”. Starting next weekend, the National Assembly will have twenty days to examine the articles of the bill at first reading. The Social Affairs Committee will tackle this from January 30. Then the text will pass in the hemicycle on February 6, and until the 17 at midnight at the most. A time “very much longer than most parliamentary debates”, argued Olivier Dussopt.
Even if the deputies do not come to the end of the thousands of amendments announced and do not vote within this period, the government will be able to seize the Senate. “It’s clever enough to avoid a 49.3”, perceived as a forceful passage, we note in the presidential majority. “The 47.1 is more effective than a 49.3” and has “a watered down effect, we see less that it is democratically violent”, tackles a member of Nupes.
After the parliamentary break from February 20 to 26, the Upper House will examine the text adopted by the Assembly, or failing that, the initial text of the government, modified by the amendments that the Assembly will have had time to vote and to which the executive is favorable. Senators will have 15 days. Then deputies and senators will try to agree in a joint committee. If there is agreement, it must be validated by both chambers. Otherwise the text will make a last shuttle and the Assembly will have the last word or the government… Parliament must decide in total in 50 days, ie by March 26 at midnight.
The use of 49.3 still possible
Before the deadline, the executive can at any time before the Assembly trigger article 49.3 of the Constitution if the votes on the amendments do not turn in its favor. Or if he thinks he does not have an absolute majority for the vote on the entire reform, because of defections from the Macronists or LR. The use of 49.3 is not limited to the budgetary texts and Élisabeth Borne has thus engaged her responsibility ten times in the fall on the 2023 budgets.
READ ALSOCoignard – Pensions: facing Macron, slingers always less discreetConstitutionalists are divided on this PLFSSR, some evoking a “misuse of procedure”, others a legitimate but “ambiguous” tool. In a grandstand at Worldpublic law professor Benjamin Morel points to a “democratic risk”: that this vehicle becomes “the standard of future social reforms”.