The centrist group Liot, already at the initiative of a cross-party government censure motion which had failed by 9 votes, “is seriously considering” putting on the agenda of the National Assembly a bill to repeal the reform pensions, a group source told AFP on Tuesday. This bill would only need a simple majority to be approved, unlike a motion of censure which requires an absolute majority.
A text in this sense already proposed by the Socialist parliamentarians
Socialist parliamentarians have already proposed a text to this effect in the wake of the partial validation of the Constitutional Council, to repeal the reform promulgated on Friday by Emmanuel Macron. But the “parliamentary niche” of PS deputies having already passed, they do not have the opportunity to dictate the agenda of a day in the lower house before the next ordinary session. Unlike the Liot group, whose “niche” will take place on June 8 and whose text could be different from that of the Socialists, but would have the same object.
“You have to remember that no one voted on Article 7 in the Assembly, we really think we can win,” says a source within the group. The Liot deputies will have to file by April 20 the texts which will constitute their niche according to a source in the group. The possible proposal will then have to be validated by the services of the Assembly to be able to appear in the niche of the group.
Another decision of the Elders on the RIP
The centrist group is also awaiting another decision from the Constitutional Council on the shared initiative referendum (RIP). After having rejected a first proposal from the left to initiate this complex procedure, which ultimately aims to submit the text to a referendum, but which has never succeeded in history, the Council must decide on May 3 on a second request in this direction emanating from the senatorial left.
“Afterwards, there were two options for us: the first, we table a motion of censure, the second, which is now quite privileged, is to table a bill to return at least to article 7 (the postponement of the starting age at 64, Editor’s note) and send all the support to a social conference,” group president Liot Bertrand Pancher told AFP on Wednesday. However, he says he fears a form of “obstruction” from the executive to prevent a vote, the days reserved for opposition groups always playing against the clock, because the debates are interrupted no matter what happens at midnight.
The next opposition niche is that of the Communist deputies at the beginning of May, but the latter had to submit their texts before the decision of the Constitutional Council. In the Senate, the majority Communist CRCE group also announced on Wednesday the filing of a bill to repeal the reform. “The authors form this proposal to respond to the current crisis and allow an outlet on the parliamentary level to the social movement that crosses the country”, write the senators in the introduction to their text. However, the CRCE group no longer has a parliamentary niche to put this bill on the agenda during this session.