Pensions: senators get into the hard part with a debate on special diets

Alexis Delafontaine, with AFP 7:40 p.m., March 3, 2023

The Senate with a right-wing majority will enter the hard part of pension reform, with an expected debate on the extinction of special plans.

The social standoff is already tense: a renewable strike began Friday afternoon in the energy sector.

The movement among electricians and gas companies started with reductions in electricity production in several nuclear power plants, "given the debate which is opening in the Senate", announced the CGT.

Rejection of a referendum request made by the left

In the hemicycle, after the rejection in the morning of a request for a referendum made by the left, discussions resumed at 5 p.m. with several interventions by Communist senators asking the government to make public the opinion of the Council of State on reform.

The senators then attack the examination of the articles and will continue the debates all weekend.

They began with the introductory article on the deficit forecast.

Then will come the first article on the gradual disappearance of the special regimes of the RATP, the electricity and gas industries (IEG), the Banque de France or the clerks and employees of notaries.

The government project provides for their removal only for future recruits.

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The leader of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, wants the disappearance of "the grandfather clause", that is to say that the special schemes are also abolished for current employees.

The Vendée senator, who promised to vote for the text "but a modified reform", tabled an amendment to this effect.

The latter will not be examined before the debate on article 7 of the reform: the flagship measure of the text which concerns the postponement of the legal age of departure to 64 years.

Until March 12 to complete the first reading of the 20 articles

"I do not see in the name of what we would exonerate a part of the French from a particular effort that all French people will make. Doesn't a nurse have a job at least as tiring as someone who drives a train?”, he argues in front of the press.

"My amendment proposes convergence (between the regimes, editor's note) until 2040, there is nothing brutal while for all French people, from September 1, the reform will gradually begin to apply", insists he.

The government opposes it and the Retailleau amendment could be rejected, for lack of support from the centrists.

The Senate has until March 12 at midnight to try to complete the first reading of the 20 articles of the text and the nearly 4,000 amendments.

With March 7 in everyone's mind, a great day of mobilization against the reform, during which the inter-union calls for France to be "shut down".

According to police sources, the intelligence services expect between 1.1 and 1.4 million demonstrators in France on Tuesday, including 60,000 to 90,000 in Paris.

In the capital, the procession will parade from Sèvres-Babylone to Place d'Italie.

320 rallies are planned throughout France, according to another police source.

Major disruptions to be expected in transport

A sign of the major disruptions to be expected, the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune called on Friday all French people who can to telecommute.

The transport operator Ile-de-France Mobilités has announced that it will offer carpooling to passengers registered on certain platforms.

On the eve of this strike, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will speak on France 5 in the program "C à vous".

On Friday morning, senators unsurprisingly largely rejected, by 251 votes to 93, a request for a referendum brought by the left, a rare procedure in the Senate, where the last referendum motion dated back to 2014.

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"Common sense is to withdraw this reform, failing to have the courage to present it to the French," said the head of PS senators Patrick Kanner.

In response, Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt defended the "legitimacy" of "representative democracy and Parliament. Previously, the communist Laurence Cohen had denounced an "institutional coup". General rapporteur Elisabeth Doineau (centrist) criticized this "binary" request for a referendum: "obviously ask the French to make an effort, they will answer no.

But if you tell them, + do you want to save the pay-as-you-go system +, they will say yes".