Interview

Pension reform: the government in the dark

The National Assembly during a vote on pension reform, February 14, 2023. © LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP

Text by: Julien Chavanne Follow

4 mins

While the unions are calling to demonstrate this Wednesday, the text on pension reform will take an important step.

A group of seven senators and seven deputies should validate the government's project before the Assembly in turn decides on Thursday.

But a majority of votes in the hemicycle is far from certain for Emmanuel Macron.

Interview with Benjamin Morel, lecturer in public law at Paris 2, doctor of political science at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris Saclay

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RFI: The joint committee – which brings together deputies and senators – is to decide this Wednesday, March 15 on the text of the pension reform.

This text could arrive tomorrow at the National Assembly.

Can the government today, in the current state of things, escape the use of 49.3 which would allow this text to be adopted without a vote

Benjamin Morel:

We can consider that

will be conclusive.

On the other hand, then, it is necessary to win a majority in the National Assembly on this agreement.

And this majority, today, it is quite fleeting.

Firstly, because we see that the majority group is both essential and extremely divided on this reform, because there are losses also within the majority of MoDem deputies, Renaissance deputies who a priori will not vote for the text.

And above all, you have to see that you don't necessarily have to have a majority on paper.

It is above all necessary to have a majority in session, that is to say that the deputies who that day because they are afraid of returning to their constituency and well will decide to go to the "garlic

" .

Well these deputies who cannot vote will not count for the government while the Nupes and the RN are very mobilized.

Which still makes this 49.3 likely.

Elisabeth Borne and her ministers repeat that they do not want to use this 49.3 and that an agreement with is still possible.

Would this 49.3 be an admission of failure for the Emmanuel Macron government?

It will be an admission of failure because it would mean that the majority is very unstructured and that the possibility of convincing on this text, especially on the right, has not succeeded, hence the pressure that is put on LR with this idea that this reform, as Bruno Retailleau said, is the reform of the right and that therefore not to vote for it would be incoherent.

Then the reality is that 49.3 would be at least a symbolic political defeat.

But if the text was rejected by the National Assembly, there, it's a defeat, it's a real stampede, a real Berezina.

These next 48 hours will also play out the rest of the social mobilization with perhaps a resurgence of anger, of mobilization?

According to what will happen in the Assembly, if ever there is the feeling, among the demonstrators, that the parliamentary way has become impossible, that only the street and the anger with in the background, the example of the yellow vests.

There is a risk that the movement will both harden and radicalize in its modes of action.

The bet of the government, like all governments during a social conflict, is that the passing of the law puts an end to the social movement.

With regard to the claims which for the moment relates to pensions and could be generalized to other elements, one thinks in particular of purchasing power and also given the weak capacity of the union leaderships to hold their base, the possibility of a movement which suddenly hardens and generalizes to other issues, is not excluded for Emmanuel Macron.

Does Emmanuel Macron play the end of his mandate with this reform?

No, the President of the Republic was elected until 2027. On the other hand, it is his ability to pass texts that is at stake, that is to say that you can have a government that is not reversed.

But if the government proposes texts which are ultimately either rejected or are so modified that the government itself can no longer accept them.

And in doing so, there is a real risk of a form of inertia or a weakening of the ability to carry out reforms, to pass texts and therefore ultimately to govern the country.

►Also read: Pensions: government and unions prepare for a decisive day for reform

49.3, the best known article of the Constitution

49.3 refers to Article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, which allows the " 

 " to engage " 

 '.

The Prime Minister can also use this mechanism for another bill, but only once per parliamentary session, which limits its use.

The project is then considered adopted, " 

 ".

By drawing 49.3, the government risks a motion of censure: the deputies must table it within 24 hours, signed by 58 of them.

The text is then discussed in session within 48 hours.

If the motion of censure fails to obtain an absolute majority, set at 289 votes, the government text is adopted without a vote.

If the motion of censure is adopted, it leads to the resignation of the Prime Minister and his government.

More than 100 motions of censure have been tabled since 1958, recalls Agence France presse, but only one succeeded, in 1962, bringing down the government of Georges Pompidou.

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