Referendum, abortion, decentralization, Corsica… What Emmanuel Macron wants to modify in the Constitution

Emmanuel Macron has not given up leaving his mark on the Constitution. After having failed during his first five-year term, the Head of State confirmed on Wednesday, during a speech to the Constitutional Council where he celebrated the 65^e anniversary of the Constitution, want to make several modifications to the fundamental law. He wishes “give more strength to popular sovereignty” And “answer” to “democratic aspirations of our time“.

But the success of his project remains uncertain. To modify the 1958 text, already revised 24 times, the National Assembly and the Senate must agree on an identical text, which must then be adopted by three-fifths of Parliament or by a referendum. Hence the need for “find a way to unite political forces beyond the usual divisions», admits the Élysée.

• Broaden the scope of the referendum

Emmanuel Macron assured Wednesday that he wanted “bring to an end» the project of extending the scope of the referendum. For example to “reforms relating to social issues“. This is what was provided for in his last bill on the subject – a text presented to the Council of Ministers in the summer of 2019 after the “yellow vest” crisis, but never put on the parliamentary agenda. This would make it possible to organize a referendum on immigration, as requested by the Republicans (LR) and the National Rally.

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Delimited to article 11 of the Constitution, the scope of the referendum only includes three themes, the organization of public authorities; the economic, social or environmental policy of the nation and the public services which contribute to it; and the ratification of a treaty. Its enlargement was discussed at length during Emmanuel Macron’s summit with the leaders of political parties on August 30 in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis).

But “extending the scope of the referendum cannot allow us to evade the rules of the rule of law“, warned the head of state on Wednesday, insisting: “we do not revise the Constitution under the influence of emotion“. A message sent to LR and the RN, who want by referendum to free themselves from European law on immigration. Emmanuel Macron also recalled the inviolable nature of the right to asylum as “limit» fixed by the fundamental law.

• Facilitate the shared initiative referendum

To the attention of the left, the President of the Republic said he was in favor of implementing “simpler» of the shared initiative referendum (RIP), by reviewing in particular the “thresholds” required. To facilitate this initiative, his 2019 project planned to lower the number of signatures required from parliamentarians (from a fifth to a tenth of their total) and citizens (from 4.7 million to one million). To date, the only – and first – RIP undertaken, aimed at affirming the national public service nature of the operation of Paris airports (ADP group), failed in 2020, due to lack of sufficient citizen signatures.

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Emmanuel Macron warned against “the competition of legitimacies» between representative democracy and direct democracy if an RIP could “undo what Parliament decided a year, two years, three years ago» or if, conversely, Parliament reversed the result of a referendum. In this sense, he took the example of the European constitutional treaty rejected by referendum in 2005 but the broad outlines of which were then adopted by Parliament in 2007.

• Register the abortion “as soon as possible”

Emmanuel Macron hoped that the inclusion of the right to abortion would succeed “as soon as possible“, with a “text agreeing points of view between the National Assembly and the Senate“. The subject had taken him by surprise from the start of his second five-year term.

Barely had the American Supreme Court revoked the right to abortion in June 2022 when the left and the presidential camp each tabled a bill to include abortion in the Constitution. First to arrive at the Assembly, the Insoumis text was voted on by an overwhelming majority.

The Senate then modified it, replacing the notion of “right» by that of “freedom» to resort to abortion. The Head of State took control again at the beginning of March, promising to include this theme in a “bill revising our Constitution“. A commitment still in progress seven months later.

• Engage in a “new stage of decentralization”

The head of state promised to open “the construction of a new stage of decentralization“, For “give more freedoms but also responsibilities» to local elected officials in order to “help them act better“. “Our entire territorial architecture needs to be rethought“, he estimated, judging that “encroachment» or even “competition» between local authorities and the State «produces inefficiency for public action” and an “loss of bearings for our fellow citizens“.

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• Give new statuses to Corsica and New Caledonia

The Head of State wants to review provisions linked to “singularity» of certain territories. He repeated on Wednesday that he was ready to grant Corsica a “form of autonomy in the Republic», six days after his speech in Ajaccio (Southern Corsica).

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New Caledonia is “a subject in itself» and its future «requires a common path“, he also underlined, more than two months after his visit to Nouméa. After the triple “no” to the referendums on independence, it is a question of “unfreezing” the electorate for the provincial elections scheduled for the first half of 2024, as well as providing the archipelago with a new status.

More broadly, the tenant of the Élysée pleaded so that “all of our overseas territories are better recognized in our Constitution“. The Republic isindivisible“, but this “does not mean” which is “uniform“, did he declare.