Repeal of pension reform: RN bill deemed admissible

The RN’s bill to repeal the last pension reform, which raised the retirement age to 64, was deemed admissible on Wednesday by the bureau of the Assembly, the highest executive body, according to parliamentary sources. With a left-wing majority, this body, where the RN currently has no voting rights, was to rule on its financial admissibility.

Ten deputies voted for admissibility and seven against. The representatives of the New Popular Front voted for. The text will go to committee before its planned arrival in the chamber on October 31.

✅ Promise kept: the @groupeRN_off will propose the repeal of the pension reform to the National Assembly.

See you on October 31st! https://t.co/zlISpZpDyX

— Thomas Ménagé (@Thomas_Mng) September 18, 2024

Its text, consulted by AFP, plans to return the normal retirement age to 62 years “starting with the 1955 generation”, and to set the required contribution period at 42 years, “starting with the 1961 generation”. An intermediate position between the current situation and a more ambitious reform, which the RN would put in place in the event of coming to power, several sources told the RN group.

But the maneuver is also a trap set for the parliamentary left, which made the repeal of the pension reform one of its main campaign commitments during the legislative elections.

A “trap” set by the RN, according to the Ecologists

To the point of voting for a text from the far-right group? “It’s a trap, that’s what it’s made for,” said the president of the environmental group Cyrielle Chatelain, contacted by AFP. “There is a debate between “giving the point to the RN” and “increasing anger,” summarized her group colleague Sébastien Peytavie. If the questioning crosses all the groups of the New Popular Front, they still voted for the admissibility of the text on Wednesday. “We are consistent,” defends Cyrielle Chatelain.

The admissibility of the proposals of the deputies is first the responsibility of a delegation, entrusted to one or more members of the office. Subject of tough negotiations between the left, the presidential camp and the right, it was provisionally entrusted to two vice-presidents, Xavier Breton (Right, ex-LR) and Nadège Abomangoli (LFI), who did not reach an agreement on the text of the RN.

For Nadège Abomangoli, the text is “acceptable” because it is “well-secured with an amount consistent with the estimate of the proposed reform”, even if those around her point out that the “repeal text has no chance of succeeding”, and comes “from a group that has not mobilized in the streets with the unions”.