The Senate adopts the pension reform project, a crucial step for the course of the text

The Senate, dominated by the right, adopted Saturday, March 11, late in the evening, the project of pension reform. This vote took place the day of the seventh day of mobilization against the text, which was marked by a sharp drop in the number of demonstrators. It was eagerly awaited by the government and allows it to give parliamentary legitimacy to its highly contested reform, and to give impetus for its final adoption.

As of Friday, the government had deployed major means to accelerate and ensure the holding of a vote in the Senate, by drawing article 44.3 of the Constitution. The latter makes possible a single vote on the entire bill, without putting to the vote the amendments to which the government is unfavorable.

The executive hopes to see the reform definitively adopted after a chaotic parliamentary course. Negotiations for the post-Senate have already started behind the scenes and will be in full swing on Wednesday from 9 a.m. in a joint joint committee (CMP), bringing together seven deputies, seven senators, and as many alternates in a closed room of the Palais Bourbon. The objective of the CMP is to reach a compromise on the measures that the National Assembly and the Senate have not voted on in the same terms.

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However, the deputies, faced with the obstruction of part of the left, were unable to complete the review of the reform in February, and did not adopt it. This means that the discussion on Wednesday will be broad, even if the heart of the text, the decline in the starting age from 62 to 64, will not move. It will also be at the center of a new day of mobilization of opponents.

Presidential and right camp have the hand in CMP, with respectively five and four holders each.

Time for the final vote on Thursday?

In the best of scenarios for the executive, if deputies and senators reach an agreement in CMP, this must be validated Thursday, March 16 from 9 a.m. in the Senate, then at 3 p.m. in the National Assembly. This last vote, if it is positive, will be worth definitive adoption by the Parliament.

But the executive is counting and recounting its troops at the Palais-Bourbon, as well as the LR votes on which it can count, in the absence of an absolute majority for the macronists. Especially since some of them are hesitant, like the former minister Barbara Pompili who does not want to vote for the reform, despite the risk of being excluded from the Renaissance group.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, however, seeks to avoid a 49.3, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote.

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The World with AFP