The Senate Law Commission has created an information mission on the institutional future of New Caledonia which will travel to this South Pacific archipelago from June 22 to 29, its work due to be completed at the end of July.
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On site, the mission chaired by President LR of the Law Commission François-Noël Buffet will meet “with all stakeholders“, said Wednesday, June 1 the commission in a press release. In the Senate, she will conduct a series of hearings and will hear legal experts next week. Were appointed rapporteurs for the fact-finding mission, in addition to François-Noël Buffet, Philippe Bas (LR), Jean-Pierre Sueur (PS) and the president of the centrist group Hervé Marseille.
Its work should enableto contribute to the reflection on the institutional situation, by supporting and consolidating the process of dialogue initiated by the Matignon and Nouméa agreements between the State and the Caledonian populations in “post-Nouméa”“, according to François-Noël Buffet. The Nouméa agreement, signed in 1998, gave New Caledonia autonomy which was gradually extended through the transfer of powers from the State to local government.
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On December 12, New Caledonia refused to leave the French nation during the third and final referendum of the Nouméa decolonization agreement, but with a record abstention rate because the Kanak separatists of the FLNKS had called not to speak out in this election. They therefore announced that they did not recognize the result. The new Minister for Overseas Territories, Yaël Braun-Pivet, will have to manage the rest of the process by reopening negotiations between separatists and non-separatists to build the institutional future of the archipelago, before the referendum scheduled for June 2023 which will focus on the new political organization of New Caledonia.