The Socialist Party puts the RIP back on the table

Five million citizen signatures to trigger a referendum is “unachievable”estimate the socialists, who will propose a reform in their next parliamentary niche on November 22 to blow up this “lock” and only ask for one million signatures.

Another proposed modification: that it is no longer necessarily up to parliamentarians to launch the procedure. Citizens will be able to collect signatures on the project of their choice before obtaining validation by around a hundred deputies and senators. The idea is really to share the initiative as the name RIP (shared initiative referendum) suggests and to put the “citizen at the heart of the process”, underlines the bearer of the text Yan Chantrel. The latter also wants to broaden the scope of the subjects concerned a little, to include in particular the tax area. As a reminder, a request for RIP on the taxation of superprofits was rejected last year.

A new RIP on pensions in April

Bringing this bill to fruition may be difficult. The question has already been the subject of very similar proposals to the Assembly from the insoumis and Liot groups, but the latter have not succeeded in putting it on the agenda of the plenary session. The left will vote on the text but it does not carry much weight in the Senate. Everything will therefore depend on the attitude of Macronist, centrist and right-wing elected officials and the latter are not very enthusiastic. As for the others, their choice will perhaps be influenced by the words of a certain Emmanuel Macron. The president himself called for simplifying the use of the RIP, a first time in 2019 after the yellow vest crisis and again last month.

Without waiting for the legislative outcome of this text, the socialists intend to table a new RIP to return to the pension reform. “We don’t want to give up,” launches Patrick Kanner, the leader of the socialist senators who wants to draw up his request next April, exactly one year after the promulgation of the pension reform after use of 49.3. This time he hopes to thwart the legal arguments of the Constitutional Council. The latter had rejected two RIP requests last spring, because they did not fit in. “The Constitutional Council has clearly played politics so as not to call the government into question”comments a socialist framework.