This is a first setback for Nupes. This Friday, April 14, the Constitutional Council invalidated its request for RIP, referendum of shared initiative, about the highly contested pension reform. The text which aimed to “affirm that the legal retirement age cannot be set beyond 62 years” was censured by the Elders, on the grounds that it “includes no change in the state of the law and cannot be considered a reform”.
A failure that the 250 deputies behind this idea expected, because it was tabled in a hurry after the use of 49.3 by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, in mid-March. To counter this disappointment, the elected officials of Nupes filed a second proposal for a RIP on April 13. “It is the same text as the first request, supplemented by a second article which creates an element of reform: a tax revenue linked to capital resources to secure the financing of the pay-as-you-go pension”, explained to AFP Patrick Kanner, the patron of socialist senators. The Constitutional Council will deliver its opinion on this second initiative on May 3. The inter-union called for its validation, in order to “break the impasse through democratic consultation”.
A single precedent validated by the Council
The RIP, not to be confused with the RIC (citizen initiative referendum that the Yellow Vests demanded, without success) is a constitutional provision adopted in 2008 during the last revision of the Constitution, under Nicolas Sarkozy and implemented in 2015 No RIP has ever seen the light of day in France.
Only one RIP proposal was validated by rue de Montpensier, the one that opposed the privatization of Aéroports de Paris, already tabled in 2019 by left-wing groups in Parliament, not yet united under the banner of Nupes. This bill “aiming to affirm the nature of the national public service of the operation of the aerodromes of Paris (ADP)” had been validated by the Constitutional Council on May 9, 2019, but had come up against the difficulty of collecting signatures citizens.
To be organized, the RIP must collect 10% of the electorate, that is approximately 4.8 million signatures of voters registered on the lists. A floor considered far too high by many observers, hence the idea of the RIC which offers less than 1 million signatures.