Two bills aimed at torpedoing the article on raising the legal retirement age have been tabled in the National Assembly. Do they have a chance of succeeding? Legally, yes, politically, it is very unlikely.
The oppositions draw one last card up their sleeve against the pension reform. Some parliamentarians are working on the possibility of repealing part of the law, while Emmanuel Macron promulgated it on the night of April 14 to 15, just after its partial validation by the Constitutional Council. The deputies of the group Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires (Liot) tabled, Thursday, April 20, a bill in the National Assembly to request the abolition of the flagship article of the reform, which bears the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years old. Two days earlier, on Tuesday, the PS deputies also tabled a bill, with the same objective in sight.
“There is only one solution to find appeasement: the repeal of the pension reform”tweeted Boris Vallaud on Thursday. The next day, the boss of the socialist deputies was delighted to see that the Liot group took over this “idea of repeal law”.
“We want to restore power to Parliament,” exhibits at franceinfo Christophe Rossignol, adviser to Bertrand Pancher, deputy of the Meuse and president of the Liot group in the Assembly. “We are targeting the article on the postponement of the legal age, because it was neither debated nor voted on” at the Palais-Bourbon, he continues. The debates on the reform had ended without a vote in the lower house on February 17, for lack of a complete examination of the text.
“Any law can be repealed at any time”
From a legal point of view, is this bill viable? “The parliamentary procedure makes it possible to adopt a text which reconsiders the provisions of a preceding text. It is therefore quite possible to table a bill which repeals a law, the day after its adoption”says to franceinfo Jean-François Kerléo, professor of public law and vice-president of the Observatory of public ethics. “There is no time limit imposed on the legislator so that he can repeal what he has previously adopted. Any law can be repealed any time, in theory”adds Alexandre Viala, professor of public law at the University of Montpellier.
In practice, it is sometimes more complicated. “The Liot and PS groups can consider a vote on the repeal of the law, but they will come up against the majority”, emphasizes Alexandre Viala. According to him, the filing of this bill is “unpublished” and arises because the executive has only a relative majority in the assembly. The opposition process “translated” so the fact that they “caress the hope of dismantling what the majority has done”. The specialist believes that they can, for example, count on “a lack of vigilance on the part of the deputies of the majority” and bet on a half-empty hemicycle at the time of the vote.
The text should be examined on June 8, within the framework of the parliamentary niche of the Liot group, a day when an opposition or minority group can set the agenda for the Assembly. And the Liot elected officials have the will to integrate their text into it, confirms Christophe Rossignol to franceinfo.
The majority anticipates a “painful” niche
The actual examination of the proposal will then depend on the agenda of the meeting, not yet defined by the group at this stage. The higher it is on the list, the more likely it is to be debated by the deputies before midnight, when the debates scheduled for this day of parliamentary initiative end.
In the ranks of the Renaissance party, we are beginning to look at this niche with a preoccupied eye. “On mobilization, we will have to be present! It will be complicated. This niche will be painful, we know that”, entrusts a heavyweight of the majority, of which certain deputies plead not to go to the vote. To achieve this, they plan to table a large number of amendments by playing the clock to prevent parliamentarians from voting on the text before midnight. “The level of mess it’s going to be… It must not go to the vote”let gon influential member of the majority.
Nevertheless, even if it were examined and voted on in the Assembly, the bill would still have to overcome the pitfall of the Senate, where the right, which had long been calling for a postponement of the legal retirement age, s is allied with the executive to vote for the reform. Unthinkable, therefore, to imagine that the text to repeal the flagship measure of the text finds a majority in the upper house. “It’s stillborn. The Senate will not take any action”slice bluntly an LR deputy.
LR deputies at the center of attention
Not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the Liot deputies. “On the age measure, we can winwants to believe Christophe Rossignol. We are a unifying group, which has the ability to unite on a vote on the right and on the left.” The motion of censure tabled by the group to bring down the government, which failed by just nine votes on March 20, is the perfect illustration of this. As during the debates on the reform, all eyes were then on the very divided votes of the LR deputies. A pattern that is likely to recur if the possibility of repealing part of the reform is examined.
“Everything will depend on the context, because the social protest against the pension reform plays the role of the third chamber, believes Jean-François Kerléo. SIf it is maintained, the LR deputies could flinch. In February, during the first review of the reform in the Assembly, the right-wing party was torn between supporters of support for the text and detractors who denounced its excessive harshness, in particular on the question of long careers. “There is little chance that it will succeed. It can nevertheless help to relaunch the debate”observes for his part the constitutionalist Bertrand Mathieu, who compares this legislative process to “an obstacle course”.