Pensions: Emmanuel Macron and his government resolve to 49.3

Prior to the use of this constitutional weapon, an extraordinary Council of Ministers met on Tuesday afternoon at the presidential palace, the epilogue of a series of meetings between the ministers and the main leaders of the majority.

At the same time, the meeting, barely opened, was immediately suspended in the Assembly by the president (Renaissance) Yaël Braun-Pivet. Then it resumed under the boos of the opposition deputies then a Marseillaise was sung by the elected representatives of the left.

After declaring that they wanted to "do everything" to avoid it, Emmanuel Macron and his Prime Minister therefore resigned themselves to having the text on pensions adopted without a vote by the Assembly, which will be the case unless a motion of censure comes. to be adopted against the government.

Already a form of failure for Elisabeth Borne, who has made many efforts for several months to try to forge an agreement with the right. But a visibly too large number of LR deputies risked missing out.

The announcement of 49.3 unsurprisingly made the left react. "When a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his project. The Elysée is not a park to shelter the whims of the president", launched the first PS secretary, Olivier Faure.

"We still have the hope, in the weeks and months to come, of defeating this reform whatever the humiliations that the president will have suffered in parliament," added the national secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel.

For days, Macronist strategists had been busy trying to find out if they had a majority of deputies, all the counts showing extremely little room for maneuver.

“My conviction is that we must go to the vote” and “we will have a majority to vote for this reform”, declared again, Thursday morning, the president of the Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé.

The Senate, for its part, unsurprisingly confirmed Thursday morning its vote in favor of the reform by 193 votes against 114.

The main union officials, gathered near the National Assembly at midday, had meanwhile reiterated their call to "vote against" a text they considered "unfair" and "brutal".

After weeks of fierce debates and negotiations under high tension, the extremely unpopular reform of Emmanuel Macron was in principle to know its parliamentary epilogue on Thursday.

A compromise sealed Wednesday between seven deputies and seven senators, after more than eight hours of debate behind the closed doors of a joint joint committee (CMP), paved the way for a vote in the two assemblies for this project moving back to 64 years retirement age.

LR deputies divided

Wednesday evening, before resigning himself to 49.3, Emmanuel Macron had also considered, in the event of a vote and defeat in the hemicycle, the possibility of dissolution, according to majority executives.

It would allow “a clarification” in front of the voters, in particular for the right-wing deputies, pleaded Aurore Bergé.

But Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the LR senators, does not believe in it "not for a single moment" because beyond the right, "the Renaissance group would obviously also lose" seats.

Dissolution ? “Chiche”, launched the boss of the National Rally Marine Le Pen, who denounced “corruption”, “scheming” and “proposals to buy votes” towards the hesitant deputies.

The President of the Republic plays very big on this parliamentary sequence. It is about the continuation of his second five-year term and his ability to reform.

The concessions granted to the LR deputies, in particular on long careers, did not dispel doubts about the voting intentions of the deputies of this undisciplined group.

Despite the "advances" of the CMP praised by their president, Olivier Marleix, several of them did not hide their moods.

The deputy of the Territoire de Belfort Ian Boucard explained, after a meeting of his group on Wednesday evening, that he still intended to "vote against" because he is "against the postponement of the retirement age".

"Nothing is over"

"Nothing is over", warned the leader of the Insoumis deputies Mathilde Panot, announcing that her group would vote Thursday in favor of the motion to reject the Liot group, before a probable motion of censure, and pending the possible referral to the Constitutional Council in the event of adoption of the text.

In the aftermath of Wednesday's demonstrations (which brought together 1,7 million people according to the CGT and 480.000 according to the Ministry of the Interior), the unions remain as mobilized as ever.

The passage of the reform would leave a "social debt" among workers, which risks being exploited "particularly the far right", warned the secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger.

But the movement is showing some signs of running out of steam. The demonstrators are less numerous in the streets and in crucial sectors like transport, the strikes do not last or are little followed.