The Senate began, Thursday, March 2, its examination of the pension reform project. For eleven days, the Upper House will discuss this disputed text. Debates that should be less heated than in the National Assembly. The right, in favor of reform, is in fact the majority there and its president, Gérard Larcher, is determined to avoid any slippage.
Do not rely on his breathless voice, the one who will give the “the” to the discussion on the pension reform project throughout the senatorial debate, it is indeed Gérard Larcher. He has also decided to chair as many sessions as possible, as explained by his comrade in the Les Républicains (LR) group, Roger Karoutchi: “ After the show given by the National Assembly, it is quite logical and normal for the President of the Senate to say to himself that naturally, it is in the Senate that the substantive debate must take place and that it must therefore be organized. »
” Change of direction ? »
Avoid going off the road, Gérard Larcher has become accustomed to it in almost ten years of presidency. A Larcher method that Socialist Senator David Assouline was able to observe closely: “ He is respectful of the minorities in the Senate. But precisely, we will see, because there, what we are told, would we be a little change of course? »
Because Gérard Larcher has warned: if the discussions get bogged down in the amendments of the left, he could use his presidential powers to speed things up. Which questions the president of the environmental group Guillaume Gontard: “ The choice that the President of the Senate could take to come and corset this debate even more, to be a little bit the armed wing of the government, I know that he must be a little embarrassed. »
The asset
But the experienced Gérard Larcher has a trick up his sleeve to soften the left: the promise not to study before the great social mobilization of March 7 the central article of the reform, the one which postpones the retirement age .
►Also to listen: Pension reform: “The debate in the Senate promises to be quieter than in the Assembly”