Tuesday, 9 October 2018

The privileged senate: "A senator who never comes to the Senate receives 7000 euros per month while staying at home"



Members call for an end to the privileges of senators who resist the constitutional reform.

Is this a way to push the Senate - still very reluctant - to vote the institutional reform scheduled for the end of the year? In any case, more and more voices are rising to demand that elected representatives of the High Assembly, like the deputies, abandon the privileges they continue to preserve.

Admittedly, in 2008, Gérard Larcher, president of the Senate LR, had removed all the material benefits enjoyed by his predecessors in the "plateau". But without ever touching the other "favors" that the Republic still recognizes to senators, including generous pensions, a funeral package or advantageous unemployment benefits.

"I do not imagine that President Larcher, elected in the Senate since 1986, does not inspire the same spirit of transformation that we have carried in this majority since the beginning of the legislature" says, not without irony, Florian Bachelier, first quaestor at the Palais Bourbon.

With other LREM MPs - such as Danièle Herin, Pacôme Rupine, Hervé Berville, Gilles Le Gendre, Gabriel Attal and Laetitia Avia - the member for Ille-et-Vilaine took the lead in a fight for the modernization of the functioning of Parliament and the statutes of parliamentarians. And especially senators.

The issue of financing benefits

Some on the right follow suit. "This is the wind of history, confirms his side an elected LR who prefers to remain anonymous. It will take time but the senators will eventually bow to this moral duty. Most Senators pretend to ignore the benefits of their status, while others defend them tooth and nail. "These devices are not funded by public money but by the contributions of senators," he defended officially.

Arguments that do not convince everyone. "All these particular financing disconnected from the reality of the world are financed by the State whereas we have 2,300 billion of debts. The real question is that of Parliament's efficiency: is it representative, economical, modern, exemplary and, ultimately, efficient in its mission? Not today. The world has changed. The National Assembly is transforming itself. The Senate remains motionless, "says Florian Bachelier.

"The Senate must adapt to the world"

Even former senators recognize it. "I do not see why we would keep the 1.4 billion reserves generated by our pension system. We should give some back to the state as did former presidents of the Assembly, "said Luc Carvounas, who was a Socialist Senator from Val-de-Marne before being elected MP in July.

On the right, the former minister and MP Frédéric Lefebvre, now national delegate of the party Agir, goes as far as wanting the abolition of the Senate in its current form: "The Senate must adapt to the world and merge with the EESC, the Economic, Social and Environmental Council ", he considers as echoing the reform desired in 1970 by General de Gaulle but rejected after a referendum.
"We in the Assembly, we lead a policy of rationalization of public spending because efforts are made by all French, said Florian Bachelier, more cautious. The time has come when Parliament must become exemplary again in order to restore the bond of trust with all French people. The Assembly as the Senate. The Senate is condemned neither to conservatism nor to inertia. "
SAISI

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