“Today, the rest is the RIP, the referendum that we are going to defend”, proclaimed the communist deputy Fabien Roussel Thursday, March 16 in the National Assembly, just after the use of article 49.3 of the Constitution by the Prime Minister to have the pension reform adopted. The next day, 252 parliamentarians signed and deposited on the office of the President of the Assembly a bill to request a referendum of shared initiative. His goal: to ask the French whether they want, yes or no, to limit the legal retirement age to 62, while the government reform wants to push it back to 64.
The government uses 49.3 on the #PensionReform : “@Elisabeth_Borne humiliates and flouts Parliament (…) the motion of censure is ready, we will support it.” @Fabien_Roussel also announces the launch of a shared initiative referendum (RIP). #DirectAN pic.twitter.com/btVkuVV4Ot
—LCP (@LCP) March 16, 2023
“We still have the hope of winning, of making the world of work respected and of creating the conditions that this reform will never be implemented, by returning power to the people”continued the national secretary of the PCF.
But the procedure for obtaining this referendum is very long and very complex. The bill must go through a whole series of stages defined by articles 11 and 61 of the Constitution as well as the organic law 2013-1114 of December 6, 2013, each with its own conditions to be fulfilled.
Several conditions to be met
First condition: the request must be deemed admissible by the President of the National Assembly. Article 40 of the Constitution prohibits parliamentarians from making a law proposal or an amendment which has the consequence “a decrease in public resources” Or “the creation or aggravation of a public office”. The bill only wishing to maintain the legal retirement age at 62, it would not increase the public burden a priori, but would maintain it as it is, it should therefore be deemed admissible.
Then, the text must be sent to the Constitutional Council before the pension reform is enacted. It is on this point that it is a time trial. The 252 parliamentarians quickly met and the request was placed on the desk of the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, on Friday. The communist deputy Stéphane Peu assured franceinfo that the president had undertaken to assess her admissibility from the morning of Monday March 20 and transmit it in stride to the Constitutional Council. According to information from France Inter, it has indeed respected this deadline.
Once received, the Constitutional Council will have one month to verify in turn that several conditions are met. First, the number of signatories. The bill must have received the support of at least 20% of parliamentarians – deputies and senators combined – ie at least 185 people. The account is good for the text of the Nupes since it has 252 signatories. The Elders will also check that the text does indeed concern one of the subjects defined by article 11 of the Constitution, namely “the organization of the public authorities, on reforms relating to the economic, social or environmental policy of the nation and to the public services which contribute thereto, or tending to authorize the ratification of a treaty which, without being contrary to the Constitution, would affect the functioning of the institutions”.
The long and difficult collection of support
If the Constitutional Council validates the bill, a support campaign must be launched. The Ministry of the Interior is setting up a platform on which voters can say they support the organization of this referendum. In nine months, it is necessary that at least 10% of the voters, that is to say approximately 4.7 million people, give their support. In theory, with a large majority of French people opposed to the pension reform, collecting this support should not be a problem, but constitutionalists, contacted by franceinfo, are skeptical. The process is cumbersome: you have to register on the platform, bring your voter’s card, your identity card, there are sometimes bugs, no confirmation email… It is also possible to to go to certain town halls and administrations to provide support.
The system has been tested only once since its creation in 2015, against the privatization of Aéroports de Paris. The bill calling for a referendum only garnered 1.1 million supporters. The Constitutional Council observed at the time that, if it could not be said that the difficulties of the platform could have been “Obstacles that would have prevented some voters from supporting the bill”, he was nevertheless “it is possible that these difficulties contributed to altering the confidence of certain voters in this procedure and dissuaded them from participating in it”.
Parliamentarians can prevent the referendum
And even if the bill garners enough support, that does not mean that the referendum will necessarily take place. Deputies and senators will be able to prevent it. All they have to do is put the initial bill on the agenda of their chamber, to limit the legal retirement age to 62, to examine it a little without necessarily organizing a vote or adopting it. . They will have six months to do so and it would obviously be an eminently political decision. It is only if the parliamentarians do not take up the subject that there will be a referendum, that is to say in almost a year and a half.
And then, if the CC doesn’t shoot the text, the collection of signatures won’t start until a month later.
The RIP bears its name very badly because in reality, it is not a referendum, and the probability that there will really be a referendum following that is tiny…
— Francois Malaussena (@malopedia) March 17, 2023
On Twitter, the left-wing political adviser to the Assembly Francois Malaussena expressed his disappointment with this process: “The RIP is very badly named because in reality it is not a referendum and the probability that there will really be a referendum is very small…” Benjamin Morel, lecturer in public law at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas, summed up the situation in a few words at Figaro : “The split initiative referendum is designed never to be used.”