The referendum on the retirement age will not take place. The Constitutional Council ruled on Wednesday May 3 that the Law proposition introduced by 253 parliamentarians from the ranks of the left and centrist deputies of the Freedom, Independent, Overseas and Territories (LIOT) group aimed at “prohibit a legal retirement age above 62 years” did not comply with the so-called Shared Initiative Referendum (RIP) procedure. According to the nine councilors of the rue de Montpensier, the bill “does not relate, within the meaning of Article 11 of the Constitution, to a reform relating to social policy” – one of the main conditions to be fulfilled in order to initiate a RIP. A justification similar to that which they had set out on April 14, in response to the first parliamentary attempt at RIP.
In detail, the Constitutional Council considered that the first article of the bill, which was intended to prohibit the setting of a legal retirement age above 62, did not constitute a reform to the date of referral. As the latter took place on the eve of the enactment of the government’s pension reform, the retirement age was still 62 – not 64. Concerning article 2 of the bill, which was intended to increase the general social contribution (CSG) from 9.2% to 19.2% on certain income from assets (capital gains on securities, buybacks of shares and dividends, etc.) to allocate them to the financing of the pension system, the Constitutional Council considered that it was a parametric tax measure, and not a social measure.
These arguments did not convince the promoters of the proposal, who saw the referendum as a ” hand held out [qui] would have paved the way for a strong democratic era”according to the communist group of the Democratic and Republican Left (GDR), or even “one of the solutions for [le] country emerges from the social and democratic crisis in which it has been plunged by the executive for four months”, according to the Socialist Party (PS). On the left, everyone agrees on two messages: the continuation of the fight against the reform, in the street and in the Chamber, as well as the criticism of the very mechanism of the RIP.
“Democracy-washing”
“The conditions they multiply make it, in fact, almost impracticable, said Somme deputy François Ruffin (La France insoumise, LFI) on Twitter on Wednesday. It’s time to win a real citizens’ initiative referendum [RIC]. » Perhaps because it felt the defeat coming, even before the decision, the left relativized the scope of this referendum of shared initiative. Firstly, because the procedure instituted by the constitutional reform adopted in 2008 is seen as a remedy designed to lead to an impasse. If the Constitutional Council had validated the RIP on Wednesday, it would then have been necessary to collect “in nine months” the signature of 4.88 million people (i.e. 10% of the electorate), according to the organic law of 2013 which sets the terms of organization of the RIP. This threshold crossed, the Assembly and the Senate would then have had six months to examine the bill. Otherwise, the President of the Republic would then have been required, at that time, to organize a referendum.
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