The pension reform leaves the National Assembly for the Senate this Friday, February 17 at midnight. But article 47.1 of the Constitution, in addition to limiting the time for debate, allows the government to force the passage of the bill. Shedding light on the legislative course of the reform.
20 days of debates and not one more in the National Assembly. The time for discussions on the pension reform bill has passed for the deputies who, after hours of parliamentary sessions – often reduced to the exchange of invectives – did not manage to go to the end of the text. From Friday February 17 at midnight, whatever the progress of the discussions, the bill will be examined in the Senate for 15 days. Very short deadlines dictated by the use of Article 47.1 of the Constitution. Itself does not come out of nowhere since it conditions the duration of the examination of a draft law on the amending financing of Social Security (PLFRSS).
If the practice is unusual, the government has decided, certainly on purpose, to go through a PLFRSS to submit its pension reform. A choice that offers the executive several ways out to have its controversial reform adopted, some of which allow it to avoid the vote of parliamentarians. But while the text of the pension reform leaves the National Assembly, will he return to it after his passage in the Senate?
What does Article 47.1 of the Constitution provide?
Article 47.1 of the Constitution is contained in a few lines and relates to the vote on Social Security financing bills. It imposes deadlines on the two constituent assemblies of Parliament to decide on a text. “If the National Assembly has not pronounced on first reading within twenty days after the filing of a bill, the Government seizes the Senate which must rule within fifteen days”, provides the article. If after the 50-day period, Parliament has not pronounced on the bill, the government can have the text adopted by ordinance.
Will the pension reform return to the National Assembly?
Nearly half of the time granted to the debate by article 47.1 of the Constitution elapsed during the first reading of the text in the National Assembly, a reading which only advanced on three articles out of the twenty that make up the pension reform. Result: the text will go to the Senate without the deputies having voted the bill as a whole. But the opportunity could arise again, under certain conditions. After the first passage of the text in the Senate, there will remain 15 days in Parliament to organize a new legislative round trip and to decide.
Given the importance that the executive attaches to reform and the obstruction encountered in the hemicycle, the government might want to “speed things up by convening a joint committee [un groupe d’une douzaine de sénateurs et de députés réuni pour débattre d’un projet de loi, ndlr] capable of arriving at a common version of the text”, explains Guillaume Tusseau, professor of public law at Sciences Po specializing in constitutional law with Internet user.
This new version of the text should then return in turn to the National Assembly and to the Senate for a possible adoption of the text by Parliament, a priori the most legitimate way to promulgate a law. The risk would be to witness a new obstruction in the Assembly and there, “the government could trigger 49.3”.
Can the government adopt the pension reform alone?
The advantage of a PLFRSS for the executive is that it can return all legislative power to the government by forcing the passage of a law. “If after 50 days of debate, nothing has happened in Parliament, either the government drops its reform, or it goes through an ordinance”, declines the law professor at Sciences Po. A measure provided for by the Article 47.1 of the Constitution. But the executive does not need to wait for the end of the discussions and take the risk of a rejection, thanks to article 49.3 of the Constitution, the use of which is unlimited in the examination of a PLFRSS . Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, however, dismissed the hypothetical recourse to 49.3 for the pension reform, aware of the rumble that this would cause, even more after ten recourses to the parliamentary tool last fall.
Can the Constitutional Council reject the pension reform?
While the Parliament and the government are obsessed with the pension reform, another institution has a right to look at the text: the Constitutional Council. And for sure, he will be questioned on certain points, in particular on the use of a bill for the amending financing of Social Security to have the pension reform adopted. The PLRFSS are a category of law that deals only with Social Security expenditures and revenues. However, in the reform, several provisions could escape this condition, in particular the senior index. Guillaume Tusseau recognizes an “ambiguity” but imagines that “the government has not decided to resort to a PLFRSS recklessly and must be fairly assured of its right”.
The advisory opinion of the Council of State, which does not presage the decision of the Constitutional Council, can be an indication of the possible recourse, or not, to censorship, according to Guillaume Tusseau. But before the pension reform reached Parliament, the Council of State did not find fault with the government’s choice to present its text in a PLFRSS, as noted The echoes.
Can Article 47.1 be used for pension reform?
If the use of a bill for the amending financing of Social Security (PLFRSS) is understood, then the use of article 47.1 of the Constitution is also. The executive can justify this legislative pirouette because it is indeed Social Security which is responsible for paying retirement pensions through the Retirement Insurance. This insurance, which brings together the National Old Age Insurance Fund (Cnav) and its regional network (Carsat, CGSS, CSS), is responsible for calculating pensions and their allocation.
Can articles of the pension reform be censored?
“The Constitutional Council does not hesitate to censor provisions that have nothing to do in a Social Security financing bill”, warns Guillaume Tusseau. And pension reform will be no exception. The constitutional law specialist explains that governments can take advantage of the legislative vehicle that is the PLFRSS to “insert a whole host of things that have no real relationship with Social Security revenue and expenditure”. These provisions are called “social riders” and are removed from the text. “The big difficulty then lies in the solidarity between the provisions. If the censored riders are inseparable from the other provisions of the text, this can bring down the whole pension reform”, details the law professor.
The censorship of certain provisions would not be an obstacle for the validated articles of the pension reform, which “could be promulgated and enter into force but would produce no effect in practice because a whole series of provisions necessary to apply” the reform would be missing. . In this case, to be indeed effective, the pension reform “should wait for the adoption of the censored provisions in an ordinary bill in Parliament”, ends the theorizing Guillaume Tusseau.