These deputies, however, remain related to the group of the presidential majority in the National Assembly.
On this twelfth day of mobilization against the pension reform, Thursday, April 13, four deputies of the presidential majority leave the Renaissance group in the National Assembly, according to a modification made this Thursday to the Official Journal. This modification comes on the eve of the decision of the Constitutional Council on the pension reform.
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These are the deputies Mireille Clapot, elected in the first constituency of the Drôme since 2017, Stella Dupont, elected in the second constituency of Maine-et-Loire since 2017, Barbara Pompili, elected in the second constituency of the Somme since 2012 , and Cécile Rilhac, elected in the third constituency of Val-d’Oise since 2017.
“For clarification”
These four MPs are members of the En Commun! However, they remain related to the Renaissance group. Barbara Pompili puts forward a “for clarification” : “By this act, we affirm the specificity of the word carried by our party In Common! while maintaining our belonging to the majority”, she assures.
Barbara Pompili, EELV MP from 2012 to 2017 then LREM since 2017, was Secretary of State for Biodiversity under François Hollande, then Minister for Ecological Transition in the government of Jean Castex from 2020 to 2022. She has always expressed reservations about the pension reform. “We cannot make a reform against the population”declared the former minister of Emmanuel Macron in January 2023.
Mireille Clapot was also critical, assuring that she did not want to give “blank check” on the text. Stella Dupont, she had pointed the finger “the injustices” created by raising the retirement age. And especially for women.
“A non-event”
A “chance of the calendar”assures Cécile Rilhac, joined by franceinfo. “We had made our official request more than a week ago”, she adds. According to her, this decision is linked to the choice of her party, In Common, component of the presidential majority, not to merge with Renaissance. “We had let it be known that to clarify things we wanted to go related”she said, and “this is what has just been definitively recorded”. If “the political timing can lend itself to interpretations, it is in fact for us really just a clarification”.
“We actually wanted to become related from January”, she says. At the time, “we were at the very beginning of the debate on pensions, a debate on which we had already expressed a slightly different line”. “We had, through the voice of our president Barbara Pompili, often said that the text as it stood did not suit us and that indeed we would abstain”she recalls.
“We didn’t want to add confusion to the confusion at that time. Today things are clear in fact we are simply clarifying that”, she believes. After the 49.3 triggered by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, “the retirement sequence, for us parliamentarians, it is closed today”.
As for the executives of the Renaissance group, “It’s true that they might have preferred not to do it now, but that’s what we explained to our president [Aurore Bergé] : it’s never the right time”. “It would have been at another time, there might have been something else that would have happened”she argues. “For us, it’s a non-event”she assures.