The left united under the acronym Nupes has found a new way to force the government to back down on its noisily contested pension reform project. On the initiative of the Communists, a hundred deputies of Nupes have thus filed a request for a referendum, a request to be debated by the Assembly on February 6, the left alliance said on Tuesday. This “referendum motion” aims to suspend the examination of the government project to start that day in the hemicycle, in order to submit the text to a referendum and thus “give the floor to the people on this crucial choice for their future”, according to a press release.
Strongly opposed to the postponement to 64 of the legal retirement age, like the whole of the left alliance, the president of the PCF Fabien Roussel assured Tuesday on CNews that “the government has chosen to block and confrontation”. “We have to come out of this crisis from above. This is the reason why we are proposing to give the floor back to the people and to do so by means of a referendum”, he underlined.
According to him, “98 deputies from the left” tabled the referendum motion. “As of February 6, the day of the opening of the debates in the National Assembly, we will ask all the deputies to give the floor to the people and to break this impasse”, he added. The four leaders of Nupes in the Assembly signed the motion, André Chassaigne (PCF), Mathilde Panot (LFI), Boris Vallaud (PS) and Cyrielle Chatelain (EELV). It must still be deemed admissible in order to be debated.
A referendum project also in the RN
The government’s project “arouses the opposition of an overwhelming majority of French men and women and an unprecedented social mobilization”, they justified in the explanatory memorandum, where they believe that “a referendum is a real democratic duty”.
If they managed to get the motion voted on on February 6 by the Assembly, which is far from won, the motion would be immediately transmitted to the Senate, which should decide within thirty days. But even adopted by the two chambers, it is only a referendum proposal made to the President, free or not to follow up. The patroness of RN deputies Marine Le Pen said Monday that she would also table such a “referendum motion” in the Assembly on pension reform. The president of the far-right party Jordan Bardella had pleaded shortly before for such a referendum, to “get out of the top” of the debate, and assured that his party would present an alternative project.