The referendum to include climate protection in the Constitution may not take place (illustration). – A. GELEBART / 20 MINUTES
Will there be a referendum aimed at enshrining climate protection in the Constitution? If this vote was, until recently, wanted by Emmanuel Macron, the answer to this question does not seem certain today. As if he wanted to prepare the opinion, in the Sunday newspaper the deputy LREM Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade thus estimates that the conditions of this referendum “are not met”. Above all, the newspaper assures, after investigation, that the head of state himself has already given up.
According to Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, to find the culprits of this failure, we must look at the side of the senators. The upper house controlled by the right, and which examines on Monday the text already voted by the National Assembly, “has chosen to empty of its substance the proposal of the Citizen’s Convention for the Climate (CCC), and therefore to prevent the agreement ”, accuses the deputy.
Battle over the term “guarantees”
The bill inspired by the CCC enshrines in Article 1 of the Basic Law that France “guarantees the preservation of the environment and biological diversity and the fight against climate change”. However, the majority of the Senate rejects the term “guarantees”, which, according to it, would give the preservation of the environment a form of priority over other constitutional principles.
The JDD also asserts in
a separate article, citing anonymous sources in the majority and at the Elysee Palace, that Emmanuel Macron gave up organizing the referendum on this constitutional revision, which would only be possible if the text was adopted in identical terms by the two chambers. Asked about a possible abandonment of the referendum, the LREM deputy assures us: “we always want to offer the French the possibility of deciding the proposal of the members of the CCC to include the fight for the climate in the Constitution”.
A crucial session on Monday
“The commitment of the President of the Republic was not to do [le référendum] on the basis of a text retracted by the senatorial right, ”he continues. “I still hope that in public session, from Monday, the senators will raise their level of ambition. But I’m afraid this is not the case. We will then see if the text is studied again in the National Assembly, ”he adds. Made responsible for the possible failure of the organization of the referendum, the senatorial right will have the opportunity on Monday to respond in session to the accusations of the LREM.