For the second time in less than a month, the Constitutional Council buried, Wednesday, May 3, a request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP) on the pension reform, illustrating the French difficulty in seizing this tool of participatory democracy.

Critics of the French RIP procedure argue that even with the validation of the referendum proposal by the "wise men" of the rue Montpensier, the initiative had almost no chance of leading to a referendum.

"To achieve a referendum, it is an obstacle course. The RIP was not designed to be used frequently, but to be used in an exceptional way. The steps to be taken are too numerous and too difficult. Moreover, its scope is too narrow," says Marthe Fatin-Rouge Stéfanini, a lawyer specializing in comparative law on issues of constitutional justice and direct and participatory democracy, director of research at the CNRS.

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To be valid, the proposal for a referendum of shared initiative must be tabled by at least one fifth of the members of Parliament, i.e. at least 185 deputies and senators. Then, according to article 11 of the Constitution, the Constitutional Council must judge whether the bill relates to "the organization of the public powers, to reforms relating to the economic, social or environmental policy of the nation and the public services that contribute to it".

In the event of a green light, the third stage of the RIP then begins: 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. Finally, at the end of this collection, if neither of the two chambers of Parliament has taken up the referendum bill for six months, the President of the Republic then submits it to referendum.

"The France must stop demonizing citizen participation"

Proof of the complexity of the task: since the constitutional reform of 2008 establishing the RIP and its implementation in 2015, only five referendum bills have been tabled – including the last two on the occasion of the pension reform. Of these five attempts, four were rejected by the Constitutional Council on the grounds of "non-compliance". Only the proposal opposing the privatization of Aéroports de Paris in 2019 reached the point of collecting citizens' signatures, without however managing to collect enough. The procedure ended on 26 March 2020 with 1,093,030 validated supporters.

"There is clearly a French delay in terms of citizen participation," says Marthe Fatin-Rouge Stéfanini. It should have been planned in one form or another for a while. Whether it is the referendum or the popular initiative to carry a text, the France must stop demonising citizen participation."

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Supporters of the demand for RIP on pension reform share this opinion. "We note with regret that the current rules of the RIP drastically limit the possibility of resorting to it, and that it does not fulfill its role of recourse in the face of a power that wants by all means to pass in force," lamented in a statement the left-wing alliance Nupes after Wednesday's verdict.

Also a signatory, the president of the Liot group in the National Assembly, Bertrand Pancher, tabled as part of the parliamentary niche of his group scheduled for June 8 a bill "to facilitate the use of the referendum of shared initiative". It proposes to broaden the scope of referendums, to lower the threshold for citizens' signatures to 1 million and to oblige the Head of State to organise a referendum if a threshold is reached.

"The idea is to give the French a voice again," says Bertrand Pancher. We are lagging far behind. It is clear that the RIP is practically unusable in its current state. This gives the impression that a certain elite is suspicious of the people. The simplification we propose is in the spirit of the Fifth Republic and in line with General de Gaulle's practice of the referendum. Above all, it will make it possible to re-oxygenate French democracy."

The Swiss example

Abroad, many countries have procedures allowing citizens to propose a referendum, but as in France, these are most often very supervised, making their application difficult. Italy, for example, allows the "abrogative referendum of popular initiative" thanks to the collection of only 500,000 citizen signatures, but imposes a quorum of participation of 50% of the total number of registered voters which has the consequence of invalidating most initiatives up to the vote.

On the other hand, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Uruguay, some American states such as California, and of course Switzerland are examples. Our Swiss neighbours need only 50,000 signatures, or about 1% of the Swiss electorate, to launch a referendum on the annulment of a law passed in Parliament. They can also initiate legislation by garnering 100,000 citizen supporters.

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"There is no ideal system abroad, but good ideas to be taken on both sides," says Marthe Fatin-Rouge Stéfanini. But the most important thing to remember is that citizen participation makes it possible to place more proposals in the public debate. That's what a referendum is for: for an issue to be debated and for parliamentarians and the government to pay more attention to what public opinion wants."

Swiss parliamentarians have thus become accustomed to anticipating the risk of a popular veto, possible within 100 days of the promulgation of a law, by carrying out numerous consultations during the drafting of their laws. Such practices in France could perhaps have avoided the situation of democratic deadlock encountered with the pension reform.

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