For Bruno Retailleau, “democracy is not the power of the street”

“Here we go to the vote.” On the next day of the adoption by the Senate with a day in advance, of the pension reform, and while a seventh day of mobilization took place in the street on Saturday, it is with these words that Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate, commented on the sequence at the microphone of the Grand Rendez-vous Europe 1-CNews-“Les Echos” on Sunday morning.

Criticizing the “obstruction maneuvers” of the left to prevent the debate from taking place at the Luxembourg Palace, he denied that the right had been a “spare wheel” for the government. “My compass is not Emmanuel Macron or Elisabeth Borne, it is the national interest”, he hammered, recalling that “the right has always pleaded for a postponement not to 64 years old but to 65 years old. of retirement age.

Asked about a possible failure of the reform, while the text must still pass Wednesday before a joint committee , before being validated or not on Thursday by the Senate and then the National Assembly, Bruno Retailleau said he was “confident”. “If the reform fails […] it would be dramatic for the country,” he said. He nevertheless warned that “the Senate will not allow its achievements to be trampled”. “We have enriched the text on several points such as the family policy, fraud or seniors,” he recalled, calling them “red lines.”

On the use of 49.3, while Laurent Berger, the leader of the CFDT, believes in the Journal du Dimanche that using it to pass the reform would be “dangerous for democracy”, Senator LR estimated that it was “a brutal weapon” but that “democracy is not street power”.

Bruno Retailleau also explained his withdrawal on Saturday in the Senate of the amendment calling for the end of certain special regimes to speed up the vote, while the government favored the “grandfather clause”, which spares the reform the active employees. “I did not retreat”, he defended himself, “I had an attitude of responsibility”.

About the immigration and integration law, which must be examined at the end of March by the Senate, the leader of the LR senators was firm: “we will not be able to compromise”. “My group will not vote for a text where there would be new calls for air”, he insisted, pointing in particular to the creation of a new residence permit “jobs in tension”. “More than 20 immigration laws have been passed, nothing has been settled,” he said.