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“I always said it depended on the wording and that I was suspicious”, declared Friday, January 22 on franceinfo Julien Bayou, national secretary of Europe Ecology-Les Verts, while he was questioned on his position on the bill integrating the protection of the environment in the preamble of the Constitution. He wants the text to include the notion of constraint, with the wording: “The Republic guarantees the preservation of biodiversity, the environment and the fight against climate change”.
In an opinion published on Thursday, the Council of State noted that by providing “that France ‘guarantees’ the preservation of biodiversity and the environment, the project would impose on the public authorities a quasi-obligation of result”. The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher recommended that he replace “to guarantee” by “favors”. For Julien Bayou, “‘promote’ doesn’t mean much unfortunately. So putting that in the Constitution is gossip. It doesn’t go much further than the Environmental Charter which is appended to the Constitution and makes therefore already part of the constitutionality bloc “.
The stake is to protect the common goods, it is to consider that the damage to the environment is problematic for our health, it is a higher stake than the freedom to undertake.
Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELVto franceinfo
On the other hand, the choice of the word “guarantees” indicates that “it’s demanding“, according to the national secretary of EELV. “It means that it can change a lot of decisions. With the word ‘guarantees’, for example you could not have backtracking on shale gas, where you could not have a law that goes back on the reintroduction. neonicotinoids “. According to him, “the right is adorned with green in its speeches. But in reality, between Total, which can drill off Guyana, and environmental acts, they will always choose the polluters”.
Julien Bayou, who has just finished his legal studies, believes that “words are important in general in political language, but then in legal language it is absolutely fundamental”. Taking up a phrase from Jacques Chirac, he continues: “When the house is on fire, you are not changing the house rules, we are taking out all the extinguishers”.
Asked about a recent Ifop poll indicating that only 36% of French people would vote if there was a referendum on this constitutional reform, Julien Bayou stressed that this poll relates to “a referendum which is very, very far from taking place, because in fact, the President of the Senate tells us that he is going to torpedo it. If it is to have the term ‘favors’, we do not know if this project will be voted in accordance with the two assemblies “. Indeed, before being submitted to a referendum, the text must first be validated by the National Assembly and the Senate in identical terms.
