After its examination in the National Assembly, the senators worked on the pension reform in committee then in the hemicycle from February 28 to March 12. Next step: the Joint Joint Commission. Quesaco?
Objective: to find an agreement on a common text
When the versions of the text of a bill or a private member’s bill differ between the National Assembly and the Senate, the Mixed Parity Commission intervenes at the request of the Prime Minister or, since 2008, the presidents of the two assemblies jointly when it is it is a bill. Governed by Article 45 of the Constitution and by the regulations of the National Assembly and the Senate, it is made up of 7 deputies and 7 senators, responsible for finding an agreement on a common text. The objective is therefore to find common ground between the two chambers in order to advance parliamentary procedure.
If there is agreement, the government then submits the final text to the vote of the deputies and then the senators. Once voted by each chamber in the same terms, it is definitively adopted.
If the CMP fails, the text leaves for a new and final reading in the National Assembly and then in the Senate. In the end, the deputies will have the last word. But for that, the government must have an absolute majority, which is not the case today. The government therefore has every interest in ensuring that the joint committee reaches an agreement, otherwise the executive will have no choice but to use article 49.3 to force the final adoption of the text. Since 1959, two joint parity commissions out of three have reached an agreement.
The final text should be adopted before March 26
In the current political context, the CMP will have an essential role since the deputies did not go to the end of the text. In 20 days, the deputies only managed to rule on the first two articles, out of the twenty contained in the bill. The CMP, which is supposed to seek a common text, between that resulting from the Assembly and that adopted by the Senate, cannot be based solely on a text, that of the senators.
The final text should be adopted before March 26 at midnight, the deadline, due to the government’s recourse to article 47.1 of the Constitution which limits the duration of the debates to 50 days. “If the Parliament has not decided within fifty days, the provisions of the bill can be implemented by ordinance”, specifies the law of 1958.