Pension reform: Marine Le Pen announces filing a motion of censure

Marine Le Pen filed a motion of censure on Wednesday with her RN group “so that the deputies opposed” to the pension reform “can express their rejection of this text”, evoking a “parliamentary referendum”. While the debates are due to end on Friday at midnight, “it is clear that no vote will be possible on Article 7” increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64, “and even less on the whole of the bill”, explains the far-right leader in the text of her motion.

While the government does not want to get to the vote on article 7, we are tabling a motion of censure to give the possibility to all the deputies against the #PensionReform to actually oppose it.

All those who will not vote for it will support the government! pic.twitter.com/1KIE7HjMoq

– Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) February 15, 2023

The motion presented by Marine Le Pen will have to be debated and put to the vote within a period of between 48 hours after it was tabled – i.e. Friday, 5:55 p.m. – and three sitting days later, i.e. Wednesday. “The few days of discussions in the hemicycle have shown that in reality, the major measure of the text was indeed the raising of the starting age to 64 years and that the rest of the measures were artifices in no way capable of compensating for the brutality, injustice and anti-social nature of this reform”, writes Marine Le Pen in her text, considering that “it would therefore be undemocratic if the representatives of the nation could not express themselves on this reform”.

Still 14,000 amendments to consider

Tuesday, the National Assembly had rejected article 2 of the reform concerning the establishment of a senior index in companies, intended to encourage the employment of older employees. Uncertainty remains on the chances of examining article 7 on the decline to 64 years of the age of departure, the flagship measure of the project.

However, Wednesday, around 4:00 p.m., nearly 14,000 amendments remained to be examined. “Even if we went twice as fast, it would take 500 hours to get to the end of the text; even if the whole of Nupes withdrew all of its amendments, there would remain 309 majority amendments,” argued Marine Le Pen on BFMTV, believing that a vote on Article 7 was “impossible”.