Pierre-Henri Dumont has tabled an amendment which proposes to purely and simply abolish the special pension scheme for senators.
The announcement is already having the effect of a bomb on the right. And she’s not likely to appease relations between deputies and senators Les Républicains. Pierre-Henri Dumont, LR deputy for Pas-de-Calais, tabled – as part of the pension reform – an amendment to abolish the special scheme for senators. Its text provides for “align the pension plan“of the elected members of the Upper House on”the common law system of the public service“, as the National Assembly has applied since January 1, 2018.
On the side of the senators, we welcome the tabling of this amendment very coldly. “It’s amazing“, Comments an elected LR of the Upper House, who tastes very little of this little spade from his comrade from the Palais Bourbon. “This amendment is the continuation of the settling of accounts by the Congress of Republicans”, analyzes a connoisseur of the LR party, referring to the recent internal election which saw Aurélien Pradié – of whom Pierre-Henri Dumont is very close –, Bruno Retailleau, boss of the LR troops in the Senate, and Éric Ciotti, who won. And the tensions which followed the poll on the composition of the organization chart of the party.
No question of “stirring up a war between deputies and senators”, defends Dumont
A provocation from which the deputy defends himself. “There is no question of stirring up a war between deputies and senators, that is not the objective“, swears Pierre-Henri Dumont, who specifies wanting”add more justice in this pension reform“. “The deputies made the effort, why not the senators?“, he asks. Before adding:This morning I heard the president of the LR group in the Senate (Bruno Retailleau, Ed) say that the right should tell the truth to the French. Isn’t eliminating special diets part of our DNA??»
This issue of the pension plan for senators is not new. Already in 2019, President LR of the Senate Gérard Larcher recalled that it is “an autonomous scheme, which does not receive any specific subsidy», and which already applies «the same parameters as those applicable to the general system“. Since the establishment of the Senators’ Pension Fund in 1905, “senators finance the benefits of their plan themselves without resorting to financial transfers from the State or other social plans. There is no balance grant, balance subsidy, or financial transfer from outside“, completes the Senate on its site.
The rules applicable to the pensions of former senators are set by the office of the Senate. The decision is therefore up to the institution, not the government. As early as 2019, Gérard Larcher undertook to “seize the office of the Senate so that the future pension reform is taken into account, once it is adopted, so that the pension plan for senators is adapted to it” .
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