This Friday, April 14, 2023, the Constitutional Council will decide on the pension reform after several days of examination of the text. Last March, the nine Elders were seized by the government and the opposition, in the form of two appeals. They must determine whether the text is constitutional. What decisions could they make?
Censor the entire text? This will be the case if the members of the Constitutional Council consider that it is not appropriate to use a Social Security financing bill to pass a reform that is not really related to it, according to Le Parisien. If this decision were to be made, the executive would be faced with a bitter failure.
Censor part of the text? The Sages could point to “budget riders”, i.e. articles considered off-topic in view of the objective of the text. According to a minister, “this is the most probable hypothesis”, reports Le Parisien.
Validate full text? An unlikely outcome according to the government. “We put in the text articles which we know full well that they will not be able to pass. These are specific points which were part of the negotiation, requested by the right or the social partners”, confided a minister to the Parisian .
Emmanuel Macron does not seem to be worried about the decisions to come from the Constitutional Council. Olivier Véran, government spokesman, said he was “confident”. For him, this decision “will be the culmination of the democratic process” (comments reported by Le Parisien).
In addition to the future of the reform, this Friday, the Constitutional Council must also validate or not the referendum of shared initiative (RIP) proposed by the left. In the event that the Elders agree to initiate the RIP, the opposition would have nine months to collect 5 million votes against the pension reform. A minister told Le Parisien: “I can well imagine the Constitutional Council partially validating the text on pensions and also the RIP, so as to relax the atmosphere.”
These sensitive decisions therefore fall to the nine members of the Board, appointed for a single term of nine years. Three of them are chosen by the President of the Republic, three by that of the National Assembly and three by the President of the Senate. Who are the nine Elders in whose hands the future of pension reform lies?
