The executive is desperately looking for a way out to avoid a new vote on pensions. One month after the promulgation of the reform, the bill (PPL) repealing the postponement of the legal age to 64 years emanating from the group Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-Mer et Territoires (LIOT) in the embly is increasingly no longer a figure of poison.
Within the majority, voices diverge on the strategy to counter this text, the consequences of which are potentially explosive. Some want to go as far as the debate and the vote. “This would allow us to compensate for the absence of a vote during the examination of the government text”, pleads a heavyweight of the majority. In his interview with “L’Opinion”, Emmanuel Macron does not close the door to a debate. “For the majority, this will be an opportunity to continue explaining our project,” he said.
“Extremely serious precedent”
But other voices, Matignon in the lead, point out that the text is clearly inadmissible because it is not funded and therefore contrary to article 40 of the Constitution . In the entourage of the Prime Minister, we do not mince words to denounce this PPL qualified as “low level maneuver”.
This Tuesday, the three majority groups at the Palais-Bourbon (Renaissance, Modem and Horizons) met in an “intergroup” to refine their strategy and try to display their unity on the subject. The three presidents invoked Article 40 of the Constitution, pointing to an “extremely serious precedent”. “This PPL is contrary to the Constitution, there is no ambiguity, it creates an additional charge of 15 billion and even rather 22 billion”, castigated the president of the Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé.
Problem, during its deposit, the PPL, according to a practice which developed in the embly – but under absolute and not relative majorities -, was not considered inadmissible by the office of the embly. Now on the agenda, MEPs can invoke Article 40 at any time. But it is up to the Chairman of the Finance Committee, MP LFI Eric Coquerel to judge, even if there is an article in the rules of the embly on the interpretation of which part of the majority is betting to ensure that it is not the only one to decide. “It is indisputable that this PPL does not respect article 40 but as the situation is unprecedented, we are looking at the best way to enforce the law”, explains Renaissance deputy Jean-René Cazeneuve, general rapporteur for the budget at the Palais-Bourbon. .
It is more a political position than a real short-term legal solution that the group presidents have expressed at this stage. This is to put pressure on Eric Coquerel, who, they proclaim in chorus, would be the first chairman of the finance committee not to respect the Constitution. The majority has moreover found in the recent archives about thirty bills judged partially or totally inadmissible by the chairman of the Finance Committee.
“Playing his role as chairman of the finance committee”
“It is inconceivable in a PPL to jeopardize the entire budgetary balance of our country. Too much is too much, Eric Coquerel must play his role as chairman of the finance committee, ”said the chairman of the Modem group Jean-Paul Mattéi. “Never will this text succeed given its unconstitutionality. Those who make believe the opposite tell canards to the French. I thought that Eric Coquerel, before being an LFI deputy, partisan, was going to blend into the clothes of president of the Finance Committee, ”lamented the president of the Horizons group, Laurent Marcangeli.
On the side of Nupes in particular, and in particular at LFI, declarations have multiplied to denounce maneuvers and a page in force. “The majority no longer having the majority, it is looking for a way to avoid the vote”, pointed out Eric Coquerel on Tuesday.
way of the cross
“We’re pretty badly off. We fell headlong into the trap set for us by Liot by making their PPL the political object of the season “, deplores a tenor of the majority for whom” it would have been better to trivialize as much as possible this totally crazy parliamentary initiative. No one believes that Article 40 could be triggered by Eric Coquerel, who would give in to the warlike gesture adopted by the intergroup…” This deputy does not believe either, for the moment, that the President of the National embly Yaël Braun-Pivet seizes the office of the National embly to disavow Eric Coquerel, at the risk of making even more difficult then the handling of the Palais-Bourbon…
“The most likely is therefore that we will go to the examination and then to the vote,” said the same. With the key, the risk that the text will be voted on, even if it has no chance of completing its legislative course. It’s an “endless Way of the Cross, cowardly, a little helpless, an elected official of the majority, of which we are not even halfway through the stations yet. »