Paris (AFP)
Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Wednesday that the National Assembly would be "again" seized of the bill aimed at including the climate in the Constitution, which the Senate refused to draft, mortgaging the referendum wanted on the subject by Emmanuel Macron.
Following the recommendations of the Citizen's Convention on the Climate (CCC), the executive wishes to engrave in Article 1 of the Basic Law that France "guarantees the preservation of the environment and biological diversity and the fight against climate change. ".
"We are not going to give up our ambition", declared Mr. Castex, in response to a question from the president of the environmental group of the Senate Guillaume Gontard, during the session of current affairs questions to the government.
"We are therefore going to move the text forward and seize the National Assembly again, obviously hoping that it can restore the initial intentions of the government, and then we will advise," he continued.
"But in any case the importance of the subject, the political and symbolic importance of the subject, requires that we have a high collective ambition," he stressed.
Under protests from the right of the hemicycle, Mr. Castex regretted that the Senate "lowered" the ambition of the initial text, "adopted very broadly in the National Assembly".
The Senate dominated by the right-wing opposition rewrote the draft constitutional law last week, opposing the term "guarantee" wanted by the head of state, which would institute a "quasi obligation of result".
The wording voted by the senatorial majority indicates that France "preserves the environment as well as biological diversity and acts against climate change, under the conditions provided for by the Environmental Charter of 2004".
As the Prime Minister recalled, the text "must be voted on in identical terms" by the two chambers before the President of the Republic of the Republic can decide to submit it to a referendum.
"It is a possibility which is offered to him, as is that of convening the Congress", noted Mr. Castex.
"Another presidential promise that risks not being kept, another proposal of the Citizens' Convention which risks being put in the basket", lamented for his part Mr. Gontard.
© 2021 AFP