Great wait in France for the decisions of the judges of the Constitutional Court who will rule today on the text of the pension reform desired by the executive and on the proposal for a shared initiative referendum put forward by those who oppose the reform.
Several possible scenarios, according to the reconstructions of the French press. The first – reports Bfmtv – provides for the validation by the Court of the reform, the text of which would be considered in its entirety compliant with the Constitution, both with regard to its content and the legislative means used to have it adopted. This assumption is considered the least likely by public law specialists named by the issuer. If this were still the choice of the Constitutional judges, the government would promulgate the law within two weeks in order to be able to implement it “in the summer of 2023”. At that point the trade unions could still appeal to the Council of State to challenge the implementing decrees which specify the methods of the reform.
There second chance, the one considered most probable, provides for the validation by the judges of only a part of the reform. A partial censure would not necessarily be bad news for the executive provided that the main element of the reform, the postponement of the retirement age to 64, was validated. The government could then promulgate the law in the following two weeks, deprived only of the censored parts, before the unions try the way of the Council of State.
In the text third it would be rejected as a whole, as the left-wing MPs and the Liot group (Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires) in the National Assembly are hoping for. The bill would be judged entirely nonconforming to the Constitution for several reasons. Among these is the lack of respect for the principle of “clarity of the law”: the detractors of the provision in fact claim that their questions have not always received precise answers. Another reason that can push the judges to censor the text is the government’s recourse – to obtain the approval of the law – to certain instruments of the Constitution: 49.3 in second reading in the National Assembly, the blocked vote in the Senate – article 44.3 – and 47.1 which limits the times of the parliamentary debate. Legal procedures, but the repeated use of which makes constitutionalists question, observes Bfmtv. For example, 47.1, underlines Laureline Fontaine, professor of public law, had never been used in the entire history of our constitution”. It remains that the total censorship of a law is extremely rare. If this were the outcome, the government would required to start from scratch.
The other issue on which the judges are called to rule is the admissibility of the shared initiative referendum, a referendum law proposal presented by 252 parliamentarians according to which the minimum retirement age must not exceed 62 years. In the event of a green light from the Court, the signatures of 4.87 million people (one tenth of voters) should be collected within the following nine months. Therefore, if in the following six months the parliament has not examined the bill, the President of the Republic will be required to submit it to a referendum.
If at the same time the reform law were admitted, the provision desired by the executive would be promulgated in the summer, while the collection of signatures is underway. Juridically possible, politically difficult, comment the experts quoted by the French media, who are thinking rather of the possibility – in this case – of a ‘pause’ of the reform.
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