Sparks are flying over French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age not just in the streets, but in parliament too. The proposed pension reforms have unleashed the most turbulent debate in years in the National Assembly, with uncertainty looming over the final outcome.
Tensions at parliament are fed by the unpopularity of the reform aimed at raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and requiring people to have worked for at least 43 years to be entitled to a full pension, amid other measures.
The bill started being examined in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, last week. Over 20,000 amendments have been proposed, mostly by the leftist opposition coalition Nupes. This makes the debate almost impossible to finish before a Friday night deadline. The government denounced the tactic. “What do our fellow citizens see? asked Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at the National Assembly on Tuesday. “A held-up debate held up by the multiplication of amendments... held up by the multiplication of insults held up by abhorrent personal attacks.”
In recent days, multiple incidents have marked the debate, from legislators shouting and interrupting each other to insulting remarks toward a minister. In addition, a leftist lawmaker was excluded for 15 days after he tweeted a manipulated photo of himself and Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt.
On Monday, another lawmaker of the hard-left France Unbowed party called Dussopt “a murderer” while speaking about growing numbers of fatal workplace accidents in France, prompting outrage across the Assembly’s ranks. The lawmaker apologised.