The French Constitutional Council on Wednesday rejected a second request to submit to a referendum the new pension law, which the left presented at the last moment, before the promulgation of the highly disputed government reform.
As expected, the Constitutional Council, guarantor of France’s institutions, considered that the proposal for a Joint Initiative Referendum (RIC), presented by around 250 deputies and senators, did not meet the necessary requirements.
The left is now betting on a next step in the National Assembly, on June 8, the day on which a bill from the independent group Liot (Libertas, Independentes, Overseas and Territories) will be analyzed to repeal the new pension law, which legal retirement age increases in the country.
The day after the submission of the RIC proposal, the French Constitutional Council validated the foundations of the reform law and rejected a first RIC application.
The law was later promulgated by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, but the battle continued.
The social protest, which began on January 19, was triggered by the increase from 62 to 64 years of the minimum retirement age without economic sanctions, a central measure of this revision of the pension law that unions and protesters consider “unfair”. in particular for women and for those who have difficult jobs, which cause greater wear and tear.
Popular actions were expected for today, on the occasion of the announcement of the new decision of the Constitutional Council, with a few dozen people concentrated in the vicinity of the Parisian street of Montpensier, where the organization is based.
“We are here to protest against the denial of democracy that marked the entire process of this ‘counter-reform’ of the pension law,” said Nicolás Bouchouicha, a railway worker for the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).
The commander of the Paris municipal police issued an order prohibiting, between 5:00 p.m. local time and 2:00 a.m. on Thursday (4:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Lisbon time), any undeclared gathering, as well as the possession and transport of fireworks in a large perimeter around the Constitutional Council.
With the new RIC request, the French parliamentarians intended, through a popular consultation, “to prohibit a legal retirement age greater than 62 years”, that is, what they had already proposed in the first request, rejected by the magistrates who endorse compliance with the Constitution.
These parliamentarians completed their proposal with a plan to demand, also in a referendum, a “significant contribution of capital income” to finance the pension system – a need invoked by Macron as the main argument, together with the aging of the population, to proceed with modify the law and force its approval without submitting it to a parliamentary vote, using a mechanism provided for in the Constitution that allows it.
The last hope of the left, the bill that seeks to repeal the new pension law, which will be considered on June 8 by the National Assembly – presented by the independent group Liot – worries the presidential camp.
A favorable vote would only be the beginning of a parliamentary path, but the left intends to request, in that case, the suspension of the new law.
For their part, the trade union centrals called two days before, on June 6, a new national day of strikes and protests, to “make themselves heard” by the parliamentarians.
Source: TSF
