The amendment which called for the repeal of the postponement of the retirement age to 64 years will not be submitted to the vote of the deputies, Thursday, June 8. The President of the National Assembly deemed it inadmissible.
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“Denial of democracy”: this is the accusation repeated on all the opposition benches, and first of all those of the Liot group at the origin of the bill under debate at the Palais-Bourbon. A text emptied of its substance since Yaël Braun-Pivet invoked article 40 of the Constitution to set aside its main provision, the one which wanted to remove the heart of the reform: the postponement of the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. Article 40 prohibits parliamentarians from creating, through amendments or bills, additional charges without their being compensated by the related revenue.
The opposition therefore denounces a “coup de force” to prevent deputies from voting, which is in addition to the use of article 49.3. Yaël Braun-Pivet replies that Eric Coquerel, the rebellious chairman of the Finance Committee, should not have validated this amendment, which she considers “unconstitutional”. Both camps are somewhat right: recourse to Article 40 is a legal procedure and quite frequent during parliamentary debates. In theory, Eric Coquerel could have invoked it in committee, but his rebellious cap prevented him from doing so. As for Yaël Braun-Pivet, she took a decision which is not only regulatory but also political, under pressure from the executive and the president of the Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé. A choice all the more questionable since originally, the office of the Assembly, the collegial body which governs the institution, had deemed admissible the bill of the Liot group.
The consequences of this controversy are disastrous
These procedural battles with articles of the Constitution are incomprehensible to the general public. They distance voters a little further from their representatives. And then the Constitution is the common rule of our Republic. To interpret it in an ever more partisan way at the risk of twisting it is to call into question our ability to make a peaceful democracy work.
This is the threat posed for a year by the hysterization of the debates which is gradually transforming the National Assembly into a suicidal closed session.