A year and a half after its approval, the National Assembly has not yet decided to increase the retirement age to 64 years. The last attempt to repeal the 2023 reform, during the annual parliamentary “niche” of France Insoumise (LFI), on Thursday, November 28, failed in the session due to effective obstruction by the presidential coalition groups and the right.
Since the morning it was quickly clear that the deputies would not have time to reach a vote before midnight, the time at which the day of initiative of a group ends, with the elected Macronist representatives of the Bourbon Palace and their allies being present to defend several hundred of amendments.
In this context, the proximity of the twelve strokes of midnight suddenly electrified everyone, around 10:30 p.m., while the left once again demanded the massive withdrawal of amendments to authorize a vote. During the suspension of the session, several altercations took place in the chamber: Nicolas Turquois (MoDem, Vienna) provoked Mickaël Bouloux (Socialist Party, PS, Ille-et-Vilaine). The physical intervention of the president of the MoDem group, Marc Fesneau (Loir-et-Cher), will be necessary for his deputy to resign. The same thing happened a few minutes later against Antoine Léaument (LFI, Essonne).
This sequence was the symbol of a day in which the National Assembly repeated, in an accelerated manner, one of the most outstanding moments of the previous legislature. But with a partially inverted distribution of roles. To try to thwart the strategy of diluting the government coalition, the “rebels” first took a vow of silence, hoping to limit speeches in the chamber to one per amendment, without success. On the bench, the speaker, Ugo Bernalicis (North), also limited his opinion interventions to concise ones “obstruction, unfavorable”.
Deputies who support the reform have almost always justified their attitude by the precedents of the LFI during the 2020 and 2023 debates, where thousands of amendments were presented. The “rebellious” and left-wing elected officials did not have harsh enough words: “thug methods”, “gross obstruction”, “obstruction against the people”even launched Mathilde Panot (Val-de-Marne), president of the LFI group, who justified her own practice by the fact that she would have been, “for the people.” “In fact, you have shown that when you are in the opposition your behavior is not very different from what you have denounced”noted Olivier Faure (PS, Seine and Marne). Is “The fable of the watered sprinkler”replied Philippe Vigier (MoDem, Eure-et-Loir), on the occasion of one of the innumerable points of order.
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