A show of hands and a surprise suspension of debates, loudly greeted by the opposition: this is how the examination of the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass was cut short in the National Assembly, on the night of Monday 3 to Tuesday January 4. For lack of sufficient mobilization, the government majority was outvoted and it is now thefinal adoption of the text by parliament which is rejected.
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From that night, after the vote which, at midnight, postponed the examination of the text on the vaccination pass, the phones heated up. Olivier Véran, the Minister of Health, Marc Fesneau, the Minister in charge of Relations with Parliament, were present at the National Assembly. They spoke at length by telephone with Matignon, in particular with the chief of staff of the Prime Minister.
The case is serious and it is Gabriel Attal, the spokesperson for the government, who is commissioned Tuesday morning directly by Matignon to react. On France Inter, he denounces “a friendly form of irresponsibility” and “a political coup” from the deputies La France insoumise, Rassemblement national and Les Républicains.
In the majority, we deny having been demobilized. For example, Patrick Mignola, the boss of the MoDem group in the Assembly, slept in his office during the vote, like many other deputies. But he insisted: he was taking a break since the examination of the text was to last until the end of the night, or even until 9 o’clock. And he doesn’t have enough harsh words against Republican MPs: “LR is no longer a government party and the snub, it is the right-wing deputies who have inflicted it on all Covid patients”, he asserts.
“What happened is humiliating towards all the deputies and especially towards all the nursing staff who do not count their hours, including at night.”
Patrick Mignola (Modem)to franceinfo
The LR vice-president of the National Assembly, Annie Genevard, refutes the “accusations of irresponsibility”. It was she who led the debates when the deputies voted for the suspension of the session. “It is a problem of organization of parliamentary time, she pleads on franceinfo. We had a text with over 600 amendments and two open meetings. I have never seen a text with so many amendments that can pass in such a short time, it is not possible. “
“It is usual, our opponents do not want the debate, they play the obstruction, the procedure, they are great hypocrites”, denounces for its part Yaël Braun-Pivet, LREM member of Yvelines and president of the law committee at the National Assembly. The deputy castigates the attitude of the opposition, which she describes as “pyromaniac firefighters”. “We are faced with officials who have only officials in name, they table amendments en masse and afterwards, they complain that there is not enough sitting time”, she got annoyed.
For the Minister responsible for Relations with Parliament, Marc Fesneau, what happened last night is a “ moron thing ”, but, he assures, that does not change anything at the bottom of the text or the calendar in the government. We therefore want to believe that the vaccine pass will be in effect on January 15, according to information from franceinfo.
From Tuesday afternoon, at 2 p.m., all the group presidents of the National Assembly will meet to decide whether to continue examining the text this afternoon, after topical questions to the government. A new debate session, therefore. This delay means that the text can only be debated by the Senate at the end of the week to meet the January 15 calendar. After the text is returned to the Senate, the deputies will themselves have to sit all weekend and the calendar can be kept, provided that the Constitutional Council is not seized.