On October 31, a bill on the repeal of the pension reform will be examined in the parliamentary niche of the National Rally (RN). A deadline that is working on both left-wing and right-wing elected officials. The former, because they have understood that this is a trap set for them by the party with the flame, for whom the repeal of the pension reform no longer seems to be at the top of their priorities. The latter, because they fear seeing the sacrosanct reform fall under the blow of a pact of circumstance between the left and the extreme right.
And for good reason, if the votes of the four left-wing groups – PS, EELV, PCF, LFI – join those of the RN, the bill of the Frontist group would gather some 335 votes, or an absolute majority. Thus the reform pushing back the retirement age from 62 to 64 years would be repealed. The Republican Right of Laurent Wauquiez and the former presidential majority chaired by Gabriel Attal are therefore counting on the reluctance of the New Popular Front (NFP) to vote for a text concocted by the RN. To our colleagues at France Infoelected officials from the left admit: “It’s complicated”, “we still haven’t found the right solution”.
The left in waiting
Will they vote or not vote? For the time being, none of the four groups making up the NFP have made a decision. However, only one seems inclined to support the text put forward by the National Rally: the French Communist Party (PCF). This is in any case what its national secretary Fabien Roussel, defeated in his constituency in the North by an RN candidate in the last elections, has suggested. A question of consistency according to him. His elected or re-elected colleagues will debate it on Thursday, September 19, during their parliamentary days. And while the Socialist Party and the Ecologists are still floundering, the rebels took the lead this Sunday, September 15.
On BFMTV, Seine-Saint-Denis MP Eric Coquerel announced that his parliamentary group would file “in its own niche at the end of November […] his own repeal of the pension reform”. This, “with the agreement of his partners”, specifies the president of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly. “It is a problem to give a social victory to a movement that proposes an economic policy that is not very different from that of Mr. Macron and to give him this guarantee”, he argued. Especially since there would be, according to him, “no assurance” that the RN proposal would be “discussed in the Senate”.
Without sticking to a rejection of the RN’s proposal to repeal it, Mathilde Panot hammered home that she “has no desire to give this political victory to the far right, which has never fought against pension reform.” And she added on France 3: “The RN has the first niche, we have the second. In the worst case scenario, if we don’t get there by another means, we have our niche, which will take place in November, in which we have already decided to include pension reform.”
On the National Rally side, people are rubbing their hands. “We’ll see if it (the left, Editor’s note:) is sectarian, if she does not vote because it is us or if the daily life of the French and the two years stolen by this reform truly interest them”, argued the National Front MP Laure Lavalette on France 3 this Sunday, in concert with the spokesperson of the RN and MP for the North Sébastien Chenu who declared three days earlier on France Info: if “The left does not want to vote for it, that means that they favor petty political mischief over the interests of the French people.”
A year and a half after having distinguished itself as the spearhead of the opposition to the pension reform, the independent group Liot has submitted a letter to Prime Minister Michel Barnier, urging the future government to conduct “a new discussion” on the text “with the social partners”.