Deputies from the majority and from the right sing the Marseillaise in the National Assembly after the heated debates on the pension reform, on February 18, 2023 in Paris (AFP / Ludovic MARIN)
Will the tumult go down a notch? The day after an electric and confused passage in the Assembly, which again provoked aftershocks at LR on Saturday, the pension reform will rebound in 10 days in the Senate, allowing Emmanuel Macron to get out of the woods.
After two weeks of stagnation at the Palais-Bourbon, where only the first two articles out of the 20 that make up the text could be fully examined, the reform is attacking a kind of fake dish that marries the parliamentary holidays and the temporary break in social mobilization, before the big day of action on March 7.
No truce however at Les Républicains, where the creeping tension for several weeks with the N.2 Aurélien Pradié has found an outcome. The boss of LR Eric Ciotti pronounced the eviction of the deputy of Lot from his post of vice-president, judging that the “repeated positions taken” by Mr. Pradié on the pension reform were “no longer in conformity with the values of coherence, unity and unity which must guide the republican right”.
Aurélien Pradié and Eric Ciotti at the National Assembly, February 14, 2023 (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
A way to formalize the break with the intransigent line, in particular on the consideration of long careers, carried by Mr. Pradié, who threatened not to vote for the reform despite the agreement concluded by his party with the government. Mr. Pradié, who had been applauded Friday in the hemicycle by deputies of Nupes, received Saturday the support of several Insoumis, symbol of a political class upside down.
The debates also left some traces within the left alliance, which was divided right up to the home stretch on the strategy to adopt. Was it necessary to withdraw the thousands of amendments, in order to be able to bring the iron on article 7 which acts the decline of the age of departure from 62 to 64, an option pushed by the unions and retained in particular by the ecologists? Or cling to it, even if it means slowing down the exchanges, as the Insoumis have decided.
“We had different tactical assessments. But we were united on the essentials”, tried to defuse LFI MP Aurélie Trouveau on Franceinfo, calling for “to stick together in the mobilizations to come”.
On Saturday, everyone also blamed themselves for the “fiasco” and the “mess” of the debates in the Assembly, which ended Friday at midnight, with an epilogue to a motion of censure tabled by the National Rally and rejected at 3 am. morning.
– Macron puts the contact back –
“It casts a veil of bad opinion on the National Assembly”, agreed on Franceinter the deputy Renaissance Eric Woerth, when the RN Jean-Philippe Tanguy deplored, on France 2, that the French have “heard only fury, insults, pointless obstruction”.
“In 9 days it is impossible to examine such a text”, protested Aurélie Trouvou.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at the National Assembly in Paris, February 14, 2023 (AFP / BERTRAND GUAY)
In the absence of a vote, the reform is therefore transmitted as is to the Senate, modified by the few amendments voted upon having received a favorable opinion from the government. In the Upper House, dominated by a right favorable to the text, the discussions should be more polished.
“From March 2, the Senate will have to give a completely different image of parliamentary democracy”, argued the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau.
In the meantime, the coming week, all eyes will be on Emmanuel Macron, who will come out of his posture of withdrawal to return to contact with the French. By honoring, next Saturday, the traditional meeting of the Paris Agricultural Show, he will inevitably be challenged in the middle of the stands on the flagship project of his second five-year term.
French President Emmanuel Macron, January 19, 2023 in Barcelona (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
Since the beginning of the year, the Head of State has exposed himself only slightly, apart from a few trips abroad or very structured meetings at the Elysée Palace, answering only a handful of questions from the press on the retreats.
Several figures and communicators of the executive have justified, in recent weeks, this diet by the need to preserve itself, on the one hand, but also to preserve a reform by nature unpopular: according to a ministerial adviser, “Macron has a personality which annoys the French” and the sometimes provocative outings he may have been accustomed to in the past could add sparks to an already flammable terrain.
© 2023 AFP
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