Left-wing deputies and senators have filed two requests for a shared initiative referendum on pension reform. We explain to you what a RIP is and why its chances of success are minimal.
The Constitutional Council makes this Friday, April 14 a second joint decision to that of the pension reform project. This is a draft Shared Initiative Referendum (RIP) tabled by left-wing parliamentarians to set the legal retirement age at 62. This approach is a last chance for opponents of the government’s project, but it has little chance of succeeding. No precedent for successfully conducted RIP exists in French history. In its process, the text must gather the signature of approximately 5 million voters. A total very difficult to achieve since even united, the inter-union and the political parties opposed to the pension reform do not bring together such a number of members.
Shared initiative referendum: what is it? How it works ?
This legislative procedure was created in 2008 under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy. It is determined by Article 11.3 of the Constitution. To trigger a RIP, it is necessary to count on the support of at least a fifth of Parliament: that is to say 185 deputies and senators out of the 925 who make up the two chambers (577 deputies and 348 senators in total). After the collection of these signatures, a tenth of the voters must also support the project: that is to say a little more than 4.7 million people. The Constitution indicates that the referendum can only relate to “the organization of public powers, reforms relating to the economic, social or environmental policy of the nation and to the public services which contribute thereto”. The pension reform fulfills this condition.
This procedure takes place for at least nine months. The Constitutional Council already has a month to validate or not its conformity. If accepted, citizens have nine months to sign it thanks to an online platform set up by the government. Anyone registered on the electoral lists has the right to sign. It is still possible to sign it physically in certain administrations.
If the required number of signatures is reached, the bill lands in Parliament. Examination of the text is possible within six months for each chamber. In the event of absence from the parliamentary agenda within this period, the President of the Republic is obliged to organize a referendum on the bill.
Two RIP procedures filed on pension reform
On Monday March 20, left-wing parliamentarians tabled a first draft of a Shared Initiative Referendum (RIP) on pension reform. Their goal is to enshrine in law the fact that retirement “cannot be set beyond 62 years” even as the government’s reform aims to shift this value to 64 years. According to the 252 signatory parliamentarians, the “choice of extending working hours accentuates social inequalities and is particularly harmful to the most vulnerable populations”. Even if this would not succeed, the triggering of the RIP procedure would make it possible to keep the challenge alive for at least 9 months. Something to annoy the government, which wants to turn the page on this delicate reform.
This second RIP tabled by these same parliamentarians still aims to limit the retirement age to 62 years. It intervenes because “we preferred to secure things” according to Patrick Kanner, president of the socialist group in the Senate. The deputies and senators on the left who signed this text fear that their first RIP will be refused on the grounds of too much legal fragility. “After analysis, we have drafted a text which is further reinforced in legal terms, with financial arguments, in order to make a real proposal for reform” according to the former Minister for the City, Youth and Sports.
It is a first to see two deposits for the same bill but it is legal. Only one constraint was present: to carry out this referral to the Constitutional Council before the promulgation of the pension reform. The Elders now have a month to examine this bill signed by 252 deputies and senators. Since its creation as part of a constitutional revision in 2008, the RIP has never come to fruition. The question of the privatization of Paris airports in 2019 allowed its use but the text collected only 1.1 million signatures, a total below the minimum required.
What happens if one of the two RIPs is validated?
The situation would be very vague in the event of a pension reform enacted and a RIP project validated at the end of its complex system. According to Bastien François, specialist in the Constitution, interviewed by The world, “it’s going to be a mess because there would be two contradictory laws”. The pension reform wants to raise the retirement age to 64, while the left-wing RIPs aim to limit this age to 62. “There is a small bug, no one had ever thought about this hypothesis when we created the RIP, so I don’t know what can happen, we’ll see” according to the professor of political science.