Pensions: Presidential camp thrashes LIOT proposal in committee

On Wednesday, May 31, five hours of noisy discussion in the Social Affairs Committee was enough for Macronist MPs to achieve their goal: to neutralize the Freedom, Independents, Overseas and Territories (LIOT) group’s initiative to cancel the cuts. The legal retirement age is 62 to 64 years.

The elected representatives of the presidential camp, with the help of six Republican (LR) deputies, voted 38 to 34 with one abstention on Article 1 of the bill on age measurement, thus emptying the text of its main measure. In the absence of the elected representatives of the New People’s, Environmental and Social Union (Nupes), who left the room with noise and condemnation “cheats” The presidential camp’s elect Renaissance, MoDem and Horizons then adopted the rest of the text, including Article 2 on organizing a conference on financing pension systems.

If they always refused to support this initiative, the goal of the elected representatives of the relative majority was quite different: by adopting the amended bill in this way, they will force the deputies of the LIOT group to submit an amendment for consideration. Public meeting for the restoration of the age measure on June 8.

“This Voice Has Value”

In order to ensure a certain majority, the deputies of the presidential coalition mobilized strongly, and in the LR, the commission members who supported the knowledge issue were replaced by more conciliatory elected officials on the pension reform. “It was important for the majority to show that there is finally a vote on the age measure.”Welcome to Renaissance MP Mark Ferraci. This voice has value. The commission is not a proxy institution, it represents the political balance of the National Assembly. »

At the end of the session the speaker Charles de Courson (LIOT) said that he “Updates the deposit[t] Amendment to restore Article 1^Eh “. From now on, the responsibility for debates and voting rests with the President of the National Assembly, Yael Brown-Pivet. As the presidential camp hopes, he can consider the amendment unacceptable under Article 40 of the Constitution. This provision prohibits parliamentarians from creating an irreparable financial burden on the state budget. However, for the presidential camp , the abolition of the age measure by 2030 is estimated at 15 to 20 billion euros.

“There should be no debate on this article, which is clearly unconstitutional. I accept my responsibility”, had already warned Ms Brown-Pivet on Tuesday. It thus contradicts the decision of Eric Cockerell, the “rebellious” chairman of the Finance Committee, who found that the LIOT group’s bill did not contravene Article 40, which protected case law favorable to parliamentary initiatives.