(Paris) The Constitutional Council, guardian of the institutions, rejected on Wednesday a second request for a referendum on pensions that the left had filed in extremis, before the promulgation of the highly contested government reform.
Unsurprisingly, the Constitutional Council ruled that the proposed shared initiative referendum (RIP) put forward by some 250 deputies and senators did not meet the required criteria. The left is betting on a next step in the National Assembly on June 8, the day of examination of a bill by the independent group Liot to repeal the reform raising the legal age of departure to 64 years.
The day after the filing of the RIP proposal, the Constitutional Council had validated the main part of the pension reform and rejected a first request for RIP.
The law had been enacted in stride by President Emmanuel Macron, but the battle continued.
Social anger crystallizes over the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, a flagship measure of this reform that unions and demonstrators consider “unfair”, in particular for women and those who work in difficult jobs. .
Actions were expected on Wednesday on the occasion of the new decision of the Constitutional Council. A few dozen people were gathered near the rue de Montpensier, where the Council sits.
“We are here to protest against the democratic denial that has marked the entire circuit of this pension ‘counter-reform’,” Nicolas Bouchouicha, a CGT railway worker, told AFP.
The Paris police chief has issued an order to prohibit from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. any undeclared gathering as well as the carrying and transport of fireworks within a large perimeter around the Constitutional Council .
With this new request for RIP, the parliamentarians wanted, through a popular consultation, “to prohibit a legal retirement age above 62 years” – which is what they had already proposed in the first request rejected by the guardians of the Constitution.
These elected officials had completed their proposal by planning to also request by referendum a “significant contribution of capital income” to the financing of pensions.
But the left is betting more on a bill to repeal the pension reform, which will be examined on June 8 by the National Assembly.
Filed by the independent group Liot (Freedoms, Independents, Overseas, Territories), the text worries the presidential camp. A favorable vote would only be the beginning of a parliamentary journey, but the left plans to ask in such a case for the suspension of the reform.
The unions have made an appointment on June 6 for a new day of action across France, to “be heard” by deputies upstream.