Don’t talk to him about obstruction. The senatorial left wants to present a moderate face during the examination of the pension reform, expected Thursday in the hemicycle for eleven days of debate. Forgotten the parliamentary guerrilla war led by rebellious France in the National Assembly. The elected socialists, ecologists and communists promise a dignified democratic confrontation with the executive. In the Senate, we behave well! This statement of intent does not preclude calculations. The senatorial opposition wants to prevent the final vote on the text in order to deprive the reform of parliamentary legitimacy. And thus return to its advantage the recourse by the government to article 47-1 of the Constitution, which encloses the examination of the law within strict deadlines.
More than 2,000 amendments were tabled, mostly by the left. A high figure for the upper house, even if far from the 13,000 of LFI at the Palais Bourbon. “These substantive amendments are all counter-proposals to government reform, defends the president of the CRCE (communist) group Eliane Assassi. We are doing politics and not agitprop.” This rhythm should allow the vote of the famous article 7, which provides for the postponement of the legal age to 64 years and has caused a strategic fracture within the Nupes. The senatorial left speaks here in chorus: it wishes that the parliamentarians favorable to the reform assume their choice, in full social movement. A way to put the executive on the right by updating its partnership with Les Républicains (LR), the majority in the Senate.
“The reform would be politically and legally weakened”
This taste for voting has limits. The left would like the gong to sound before the final vote on the text. She would certainly attribute this setback to the procedure chosen by the government, but is already delighted. “If this text was not voted on in the Assembly and then in the Senate, that would take away a lot of its strength”, judges the boss of the PS senators Patrick Kanner. This situation would be unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic. “The reform would be politically and legally weakened,” agrees his environmentalist counterpart Guillaume Gontard. Politically, because its legitimacy would be undermined. Legally, because its defendants could invoke an attack on the sincerity of the debates in their appeal to the Constitutional Council. “Our socialist friends have to face their ‘nupesiated’ base, smiles a centrist senator. If they give the impression of being too conciliatory and too senatorial, they will be loaded into their federations.”
Avoid the obstruction, without going too fast. The left intends to draw on traditional parliamentary tools to achieve this objective, such as the defense of amendments or requests for public ballots. The study of the reform will be preceded by the examination of several procedural motions, which will delay the beginning of the discussion of the articles by a few hours.
Larcher wants to go all the way
Determined to go to the end of the text, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, however, has a master asset. By virtue of Regulation 38, he can limit to two speakers “of opposite opinion” the speaking “on the whole of an article or in the explanations of vote relating to an amendment”. The senator informed the presidents of groups that he could use it. “We have the regulatory means not to let ourselves be overwhelmed”, assures those around him. The government can finally resort to the “blocked vote” in order to limit the debates.
This battle will have direct consequences on the legislative procedure. A Joint Joint Committee (CMP) will meet after the passage of the reform in the Senate. Seven deputies and seven senators will be responsible for agreeing on a final copy, submitted to the vote of the National Assembly and the Senate. Without a vote in the upper house, the government’s text would be the only basis for the work of this conciliation body. Senator LR from Bouches du Rhône Stéphane Le Rudulier warns: “It would be better for social measures to be integrated into the text debated in the CMP, rather than working on a text that has not been thought through to the end.”