Matignon announced that the Prime Minister would herself seize the institution for an examination “as soon as possible” of the hotly contested text.
By IM with AFP
© BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
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ELisabeth Borne will seize “directly the Constitutional Council”, announced Matignon, for an examination “as soon as possible” of the text of the pension reform. An announcement made a few hours after the rejection of two motions of censure in the Assembly, thus validating the adoption of the pension reform. The Prime Minister thus wishes that “all the points raised during the debates can be examined” specified Matignon, while the opposition spoke of having recourse to the Constitutional Council.
The left contested in particular the fact that this reform could be carried out by means of a draft amendment to the Social Security budget.
READ ALSOMotion of censure: the story of a crazy session in the Assembly
A shared initiative referendum tabled Monday evening
The Constitutional Council must also examine the admissibility of a request for a referendum of shared initiative, initiated by the left to contest the government’s project, and which was submitted to it on Monday. Some 250 parliamentarians, deputies and senators, mainly from the left, have tabled it, while the reform has just been adopted in Parliament.
The Council must check its admissibility, in particular by looking at whether the consultation relates to the areas of “the organization of public authorities, reforms relating to economic, social or environmental policy and the public services which contribute thereto”. Then could open the collection of citizen signatures, in an attempt to reach a tenth of voters, or 4.87 million signatures, within nine months, to open the way to a referendum.
READ ALSOPensions: how the right became leftIn their text, the left-wing parliamentarians judge that the “choice of extending working hours accentuates social inequalities and is particularly harmful to the most vulnerable populations”. They propose to submit to a referendum the fact that retirement “cannot be fixed beyond sixty-two years”.
A complex procedure, the shared initiative referendum (RIP) has never succeeded since its introduction into the Constitution in 2008, on the initiative of Nicolas Sarkozy.