The debate on pension reform in France has taken a final twist. On June 8th, the LIOT group of centrist MPs was due to have an alternative bill examined by MPs, designed to reverse the main provisions of the law imposed by the government a few weeks ago, but the government party has used various constitutional tools to invalidate their approach.
The LIOT group of centrist MPs, opposed to the reform, had distinguished themselves in the first phase of the debates by proposing a motion of censure on March 20th aimed at toppling the government, an attempt that failed by just 9 votes. These resourceful MPs chose to take advantage of the practice wherein initiatives can be presented before Parliament for consideration. On that day, they put a new pension bill forward for the vote of MPs, because they believed that the parliamentary debate had been confiscated by the authoritarian use of Article 49.3 of the French Constitution. This particular article allows a law to be enforced regardless of the MPs’ opinion.
The debate raged for several weeks. The Renaissance government party was determined to prevent the LIOT group’s bill from being debated. The president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who should normally play the role of referee between the parties, used her authority—clearly at the request of the executive—to have the text proposed by the centrists declared unconstitutional, using Article 40 of the Constitution, which stipulates that a bill is unconstitutional if it increases State expenditure without increasing revenue.
Article 40 is very rarely used, given that many of the reforms put to the vote actually increase State expenditure. Its application, therefore, was fallacious. The chairman of the finance committee, Éric Coquerel, who belongs to the left-wing NUPES coalition, had given his favourable opinion to the examination of the law; nevertheless, the chairman preferred to ignore it, in defiance of French parliamentary practice. As the LIOT group pointed out, this was the first time that such an abuse of authority has occurred in the history of the Fifth Republic.
The day of June 8th was thus devoted to examining the centrists’ bill, but the contest was lost before it began. Article 1 of the bill, which provided for lowering the retirement age from 64 to 62, was invalidated by the decision of President Braun-Pivet, emptying the LIOT group’s bill of all substance. The government camp defended itself on the grounds that the LIOT bill was “irresponsible and inadmissible,” while the centrist group, supported on the floor of the National Assembly by both the Rassemblement National and the left-wing coalition, accused the government of showing contempt for the institutions, and in particular, for the rights of Parliament. “You are afraid of the vote,” exclaimed Marine Le Pen to the government. Charles de Courson, the law’s rapporteur, had this to say:
What is at stake today is the legitimacy of your reform and, more generally, of your policy. This is a parliamentary initiative that does not have to be conditional on the government’s agreement before the National Assembly can simply vote, which is its constitutional raison d’être. The result of this debasement of Parliament can only be a lack of interest in our institutions and, in the worst case scenario, anger and violence.
Indeed, once again, what is at stake in this final episode on pension reform goes far beyond the issue itself. At issue are the questionable political methods of Emmanuel Macron and Élisabeth Borne’s government.
After three hours of fierce debate, the LIOT group ended up withdrawing its bill, forced to admit its uselessness regarding the obstruction of the government party. The proposal of a new motion of censure, again with the aim of toppling the government, is currently being considered by the various opposition groups.
