“We reiterated our request for a referendum” to the Prime Minister, explains the president of the Liot group in the National Assembly

“We reiterated our request for a referendum, article eleven of the Constitution, so that our compatriots can vote quickly for or against this reform”reacts Monday, April 3 Bertrand Pancher, president of the Liot group (Freedoms, independents, Overseas and territories) in the National Assembly and presenter of a transpartisan motion of censure against the reform, after his interview with Christophe Nagelen, co-president of the Liot group and Elisabeth Borne at Matignon on Monday afternoon at Matignon. “We really believe that it is a condition to appease our country”he adds.

Bertrand Pancher affirms that he will be part of the delegation of parliamentarians who will submit a letter to the Élysée on Tuesday April 4 to ask Emmanuel Macron for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP) on the pension reform. “I’ll go”he said, recalling that he “has long been asking to generalize the referendum process” and that it would be “common sense to actually lower the threshold to far fewer petitioners or people”. As a reminder, the RIP must obtain the support of at least 185 parliamentarians. The Constitutional Council must then carry out several verifications and then obtain the support of at least one tenth of the voters (nearly 4,800,000 people). “We will see tomorrow how it will go”.

A “new legislative method”

Monday, April 3, “the Prime Minister did not answer us that she was considering suspending this reform project”, he explains. On the other hand, she mentioned “his new method” and in particular the fact “that it was going to involve Parliament better in its legislative projects such as the law on military programming, the law on agriculture, the law on programming on energy”. A method “that she should probably have applied for pensions”believes Bertrand Pancher.

An interview that also did not allow us to start on new bases. “We explained that there was no shame in backing down on a text of this type and that we could not step over this question of pensions like that”. He hopes that the request for withdrawal and a referendum, “associated with those of the trade unions”, may influence the decision of the President of the Republic, pending the decision of the Constitutional Council, on April 14, which “may be going to completely overhaul this text”he concludes.