The “Sages” of the Constitutional Council approved the government’s project to increase the retirement age to 64 in France, but there are 6 partial censorships of articles. They also rejected the call for a referendum on pension reforms.
The Board also rejected the “senior Index” and the senior contract.
The Sages failed in an armored building by the gendarmes and a country in social fury. They opted for a “partial censorship” of the pension reform of President Emmanuel Macron, which will allow me to enact it.
President Emmanuel Macron He managed to keep his wish unchanged to extend retirement from 62 to 64 in France, which was the heart of his project.
The law will be promulgated in 48 hours. A legal victory for the head of state a social disaster that will worsen because the mobilization will not stop and an inevitable political crisis, with 4 years to go in power.
Six articles censored
Six articles were censored by the Sages, in what is called Partial censorship of the text and 30 were declared valid. The referendum was rejected in the form but it might be represented because its biggest problem is the wording.
The law has not been technically fully validated but rather partially censored by the Constitutional Council. The president can promulgate it in 48 hours as he intends or hand it over to a new deliberation in the National Assembly.
Rarely has a decision of the Constitutional Council aroused so much expectation and there was not a single leak: the wise men, whose independence is sometimes questioned, They voted for the pension reform that the Executive wants and they rejected the proposed joint initiative referendum proposed by the left. It is elected by majority and you will never know who voted what.
At six in the followingnoon on a rainy Friday, the nine wise men made their sentence known. They were protected by a water hydrant truck and a hundred gendarmes at the gate, plus snipers.
The trade unionists met an hour later to analyze it and they declined the invitation by Emmanuel Macron to meet on Tuesday at the Elysée Palace with the bosses. He had not received them until now.
At least 280 marches were taking place throughout the country this Friday to accompany this social and political combat, which does not end with this sentence.
In Paris, trade unionists and youth had met in the rain at the Hotel de Ville, in a fight that has revitalized the mobilization in France. There are 69 detainees.
The possible verdicts
If many constitutionalists barely believed in the possibility of total censorship of the reform, the path of partial censorship and the validation of the shared initiative referendum it was the best possibility.
Several verdicts were possible. Finally the wise have chosen partial censorship or “scenario 2” among all these chances.
Scenario 1: the Constitutional Council fully validated the reform.
This option would mean that the members of the Constitutional Council would find nothing wrong with the bill, which would then be judged in full compliance with the Constitution, both in terms of the substance of the text and the legislative means used for its adoption.
This possibility was considered the least probable by specialists in public law.
“It is almost impossible for the Wise to say yes to the entire text,” estimated the constitutionalist Paul Cassia. “We would be in for something unprecedented before a reform that has been legally tied in haste.”
In case of full validation, the government would enact the law within two weeks, hoping to apply “in the summer of 2023.”
“Perhaps there is no way out and this law will be promulgated and applied,” CFDT general secretary Laurent Berger admitted last week.
But unions might still go to the Council of State to challenge the decrees of application that specify the terms of the reform. “The implementing decrees will have to be written and they are extremely important because when we touch the decrees, we touch people’s lives,” said Laurent Berger.
scenario 2: the Constitutional Council partially censors the text.
Second possibility on the table, considered the most credible by specialists and the one applied by the Constitutional Council: the wise judge that part of the law – exactly 6 articles- It is not in accordance with the Constitution.
Among the possible reasons for rejection are the so-called “budget problems”. All provisions of the amending budget for social security, the government’s chosen vehicle for pension reform, must be related to social protection.
But several elements raise questions: is the experimentation of the senior CDI really linked to the financing of social security in France? Does the senior index, which aims to measure the employment of seniors in companies, also have its place in the text?
“Everything outside the financial sphere can be considered a budget clause,” recalled Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council since January.
partial censorship
Partial censorship is not necessarily such bad news for the executive branch, because the main element of the reform has been validated: the retirement age at 64 years. The government might thus promulgate the purged law of censored passages before the unions try their luck before the Council of State.
“If there is censorship of points but not of 64 years, then that will in no way respond to social conflict”, warned the general secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger.
Scenario 3: the Constitutional Council completely censors the text.
This was the option demanded by parliamentarians of the left and the Liot group in the National Assembly. The total censorship of the text meant that the Constitutional Council considered the bill totally unconstitutional.
Opponents argue that parliamentarians have not always gotten precise answers to their questions, be it regarding the number of people with “full-career with minimum wage” who might receive 1,200 euros in pension or the precise starting age for long careers. Which calls into question the question of “the clarity of the law”.
“The clarity of the debate has not been respected in a manifest, serious and repeated way, to the point that the Council might say that the law did not respect ordinary parliamentary procedure. And therefore censor the law,” judged the constitutionalist Dominique Rousseau.
Another question that might have pushed the scholars to completely censor the text: that of the lack of “sincerity of the parliamentary debates”. In order to get the pension reform approved, the government multiplied the use of various tools of the Constitution: article 49.3 in the National Assembly and 47.
The reactions
Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne announced that “There are no winners or losers tonight” with this resolution. Not everyone agrees with her.
The left and right rejected the sentence of the Constitutional Council. Fabiel Roussel, leader of the communist party, asked the president “do not provoke” and “do not enact this law in the next 48 hours.”
Warns regarding the risk ofa social eruption and set the country on fire.” He asked the president to do like President Jacques Chirac with the CPE and not promulgate the law, in the name of interest and pacification.
Marine Le Pen, from the ultra-right National Regrouping, stated that “the political fate of the reform is not sealed. The people have their last word. We will have to prepare the alternation that will come regarding this useless and unfair reform, ”she said.
The leader of the leftist Nupes, Jean Luc Mélenchon, said that the “decision of the Constitutional Council shows that it is more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy that of the sovereign people. The fight continues and we must gather our forces.”
The reasons and the fury of 49.3
Macron has seen his Renaissance party slowly fade away in the National Assembly and it does not have a majority to apply its projects.
It must “porote” each vote in parties that are suffering a similar crisis, but whose deputies have no sympathy for the presidential methodology.
That is why he had to appeal to 49.3, a constitutional mechanism that allows not to vote on the project in the Assembly.
It was introduced by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 to achieve greater political stability and expand the powers of government.
has been used more than 80 times since its creation, most notably by former Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard 28 times between 1988 and 1991 under then President Francois Mitterrand.
Macron’s former prime minister, Edouard Philippe, tried to use it for pension reform in March 2020. But fit fell through when the COVID pandemic broke out.
The current prime minister of the French president, Elisabeth Borne, had to turn to him once more, when she realized at the last minute that they had not gathered the votes enough to pass the pension reform.
But French governments had failed in their attempt to reform retirement. The 2020 attempt to change the pension system foundered and resulted in the longest strikes in the history of France. Now twelve consecutive marches show that the country is furious with the measure.
paris correspondent
ap
