The turn of the Elders to enter the scene in the pension reform. The Constitutional Council will render two decisions on Friday April 14: one on the constitutionality of the bill adopted in Parliament after an appeal to 49.3, and the other on the admissibility of the request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP) launched by the left. Guest on the program Le Grand Rendez-vous in partnership with Europe 1, CNews and The echoesJean-Louis Debré, former president of the institution between 2007 and 2016, talks about the role that the Elders are about to play.
The Sages do not judge “opportunity”
First, the former President of the National Assembly puts “things in order: the Constitutional Council is not there to render services. It does not judge in opportunity, it must state the law”. Faced with Sonia Mabrouk, Mathieu Bock-Côté and Stéphane Dupont, Jean-Louis Debré recalls that “any major referral to the Council” was made in a particular context, like that particularly tense on this reform, “because if it is seized, it is that there are oppositions”, he underlines.
If Jean-Louis Debré does not know what the institution, chaired by his successor Laurent Fabius, will decide, for him, the Council “must base its decisions on law, and its role is to say whether the Constitution has been (respected) “, hammering that one thing that “still holds in France is the rule of law”.
Two legal questions about the bill
The former Minister of the Interior under Jacques Chirac agrees to share his legal expertise on the constitutionality of the bill. And among the questions that arise, there is “the question of the legislative vehicle”. “Can we carry out a pension reform using an amending Social Security finance law, that is to say a law that modifies? So, it seems that in the law, there are provisions that could be ‘apply’, analyzes Jean-Louis Debré.
“Secondly, there are what are called riders,” continues the former President of the Constitutional Council, noting that this is a case law he knows well. “Do, yes or no, a certain number of provisions find their place in this financing law?” Asks the man from the right. However, according to him, the use of articles 47.2 and 49.3 during the debates should not be called into question.
The decision of the Constitutional Council “must be an opportunity to extend our hand”
Beyond these various questions, Jean-Louis Debré considers that “the important thing is the interpretation that we will give” to these decisions, even if he does not exclude a text deemed entirely unconstitutional by the wise. “At the point where I am, I imagine everything. There is once in the history of the Constitutional Council where we canceled a whole law (the finance law on December 24, 1979, editor’s note), but I think it is more likely that the Council will respond point by point” to the observations, he explains.
Finally, Jean-Louis Debré evokes the political repercussions of the institution’s decisions. “I think that when you are in power, it should be an opportunity to extend your hand, to get back around the table and to discuss again”.