Laura Laplaud with AFP 12:25 p.m., March 21, 2023

The request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP), initiated by the left to challenge the pension reform, was submitted Monday to the Constitutional Council, said the institution which will first examine the admissibility. But what is it?

Some 250 parliamentarians, deputies and senators mainly from the left, submitted Monday to the Constitutional Council a request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP), while the pension reform was adopted in Parliament the same day.

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How does it work?

The referendum of shared initiative provides for the possibility of organizing a popular consultation on a draft law. For this, 185 of the 925 parliamentarians must table a so-called "referendum" bill. In the current situation, the RIP is already supported by 250 parliamentarians. Next, the Council must verify its admissibility, in particular by examining whether the consultation concerns the areas of "the organisation of public authorities, reforms relating to economic, social or environmental policy and the public services which contribute to it".

If the application is admissible...

If the request is admissible, it could open the collection of citizen signatures, in order to try to reach 10% of voters, or 4.87 million signatures, within nine months, to pave the way for a referendum. If signatures are obtained, the National Assembly and Senate have six months to consider the new bill. If they do not succeed, the President of the Republic must submit it to the referendum of the French people.

In their text, the left-wing parliamentarians believe that the "choice to extend working hours accentuates social inequalities and is particularly detrimental to the most vulnerable populations." They propose to submit to a referendum the fact that retirement "cannot be fixed beyond 62 years".

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A complex procedure?

The referendum of shared initiative (RIP) has never been successful since its introduction into the Constitution in 2008, at the initiative of Nicolas Sarkozy. A request for RIP was launched in 2019-2020 to challenge the privatization of Aéroports de Paris, but stopping at just over a million signatures, below the necessary threshold. However, the government had suspended its privatization project due to the coronavirus crisis that had hit the air transport sector hard.