While Emmanuel Macron, the government, the majority and opponents of the pension reform remain suspended to the decision of the Sages of the rue de Montpensier on the constitutionality of the reform, expected Friday, April 14, the Constitutional Council will also render the same day its decision on the request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP) filed by 252 parliamentarians.

These deputies and senators from the left and the centre tabled on 20th March, the day of the rejection of the motions of censure after the use of 49.3 by Élisabeth Borne, a request for RIP on a bill aimed at "affirming that the legal retirement age cannot be set beyond 62 years".

According to article 11 of the Constitution, the Constitutional Council must judge whether the bill relates to "the organization of the public authorities, to reforms relating to the economic, social or environmental policy of the nation and the public services that contribute to it".

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In the event of a green light, the second stage of the RIP would then begin: the collection, for nine months, of signatures in support of this bill of at least one tenth of the voters registered on the electoral lists, or about 4.8 million citizens.

"We are very confident in our ability to collect the necessary signatures. We will make a point with the inter-union to organize things. But you can count on us to have the necessary know-how so that the French can express themselves, "said the communist deputy Sébastien Jumel, Tuesday, April 11, at a press briefing at the National Assembly.

Given the strong "popular discontent", André Chassaigne, another instigator of the RIP procedure and boss of the communist deputies, is "betting that we will not need so much time", counting on reaching this threshold "before the summer", in a "democratic bubbling" of the country.

The challenge of collecting signatures

Despite several attempts, no RIP has been completed since its introduction into the Constitution in 2008, under the impetus of Nicolas Sarkozy. The previous cross-party trial, in 2019-2020 against the privatization of Aéroports de Paris (ADP), had recorded more than a million signatures, still far from the 10% required by the electorate. However, the government had suspended its privatization project due to the Covid-19 crisis.

"The fact that we were able to collect a million signatures on ADP is encouraging because it was not a subject that closely concerned the French," said Sébastien Jumel. Pensions are different, the strong mobilization in the streets has shown it."

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The promoters of the RIP know, however, that everything may be done to complicate their task. In 2019, the website set up by the government to collect signatures had many flaws that made the process of signing complex.

"We know that it will take a big mobilization. We left for months of fighting against this project. We will have to go door-to-door and go to the markets with our tablets to help people sign the petition, "acknowledged Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), Wednesday 12 April, on Franceinfo.

Can a RIP suspend the application of the pension reform?

A positive decision of the Constitutional Council on the request for RIP would also open another battle, this one legal: the pause or not of the application of the government's pension reform.

Opponents of raising the legal retirement age to 64 say the reform should be suspended during the nine months of signature collection. The Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, who has "read a number of analyses", says that "even if the Constitutional Council validates the request for a referendum, this does not prevent the implementation of the text as it was adopted".

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Put on pause, the head of state "has the right and it is even desirable that he does it, to avoid any conflict with the referendum procedure and appease citizen anger," defended the constitutionalist Dominique Rousseau, in a forum published on March 13 in Le Monde.

Still, even if the RIP is validated by the Constitutional Council, then succeeds in collecting signatures, it is unlikely that Emmanuel Macron will decide to organize a referendum that would bury his own reform. It would be enough for Parliament to take up the bill within six months of the collection of signatures to avoid asking the French for their opinion.

With AFP

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