(Paris) The French government must face two motions of censure in the National Assembly on Monday afternoon, after its passage in force on the unpopular pension reform, in a context of anger still very strong in the country.
Two motions of censure will be examined – one “transpartisan” tabled by the centrist independent parliamentary group Liot and the other tabled by the National Rally (RN-extreme right). These motions follow Thursday’s appeal by the government to Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote if no motion of censure succeeds.
Emmanuel Macron, the true initiator of “49.3”, who had remained silent on the subject since Thursday, in a message to the Presidents of the Senate and the Assembly sent to AFP, expressed “his wish that the text on pensions can go to the end of his democratic journey with respect for all”.
After two months of consultations and intense union and popular mobilization against the project, the forced passage of the executive was reviled by the opposition.
Since January 19, many French people have demonstrated eight times to express their refusal of this reform, the flagship measure of which, the decline in the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, crystallizes anger.
Opponents of this reform consider it “unfair”, especially for women and employees in arduous jobs.
But this opposition will have to be united in the Assembly on Monday, from the far right to the radical left, and count on around thirty votes from the deputies Les Républicains (LR, traditional right) to overthrow the government, which has only a relative majority in the Assembly.
An improbable scenario, no government having fallen following a motion of censure since the advent of the French Fifth Republic in 1958, but not impossible for all that, while the pressure is mounting on parliamentarians.
MP LR Aurélien Pradié, who led the revolt on the right on this reform, announced Monday that he would vote for the Liot group’s motion of censure to send an “electroshock” to the executive, but not that filed by the extreme LAW.
According to him, the number of LR deputies ready to vote for censure are “perhaps fifteen, I don’t know if there are more”.
For his part, the boss of the LR deputies Olivier Marleix called, in the newspaper Le Figaro, his colleagues for “responsibility” by considering that those who will vote for a motion abandon “the voice of the people to the extremes”.
Denouncing a “denial of democracy”, demonstrators gathered again on Sunday in several cities in France, including Paris. Incidents occurred in the French capital on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening.
On the social front, several key sectors of the economy remain disrupted, particularly in transport, waste collection and fuel supply. The largest refinery in the country, located in Normandy (north-west), has begun to be shut down by opponents and other sites could follow.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest, without the pension systems being completely comparable. The government has chosen to extend working hours to respond to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population.
Many analysts believe that this pension reform and the protest it has brought about will already leave an indelible mark on the second five-year term of Emmanuel Macron, who had made this project the symbol of his reform desire.
“Let’s go to clarity. Clarity is the vote” on motions of censure, launched the leader of the majority group in the Assembly, Aurore Bergé, interviewed by the media Franceinfo-France Inter-Le Monde.
And if the government were overthrown, “we have to assume, we go back,” she added, with a possible dissolution that the French president, currently at the lowest in the polls – 28% approval – could decide for. 2019.
On Monday, several demonstrations to oppose the pension reform caused major traffic disruptions near Rennes (west).
Work stoppages by supervisors are feared Monday in France in high schools, for the first day of the 2023 baccalaureate specialty tests.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has asked airlines to cancel Tuesday and Wednesday 20% of their flights to Paris-Orly and Marseille-Provence (south-east).
A new day of strikes and demonstrations is scheduled for Thursday across France at the call of the unions.
