France: in an explosive social climate, the Constitutional Council ratifies the raising of the retirement age

The “Sages” of the Constitutional Council have approved the government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 in France, but there are 6 partial complaints of articles. They also rejected the call for a referendum on pension reform.

The Board also rejected the “senior index” and the senior contract.

The Sages failed an armored building from the gendarmes and a country in social fury. They opted for a “partial censure” of President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, which it will allow me to implement it.

President Emmanuel Macron He managed to keep his desire unchanged extend the pension 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 which will get worse because the mobilization will not stop and an inevitable political crisis, 4 years from power.

Six censored articles

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 form but could be represented because its biggest problem is the wording.

The law has not technically been fully validated, but rather partially censored by the Constitutional Council. The president can promulgate it in 48 hours as he wishes or submit it to a new resolution of the National Assembly.

Rarely has a decision by the Constitutional Council aroused so much anticipation and there hasn’t been a single leak of news: 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. He is elected by majority e you’ll never know who voted for what.

At six o’clock on a rainy Friday afternoon, the nine wise men delivered their sentence. They were protected by a truck with water cannons 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 the bosses at the Elysée on Tuesday. I had not received them until now.

At least 280 marches were held this Friday across the country to accompany this social and political struggle, which does not end with this sentence.

In Paris, trade unionists and young people had met in the rain at the Hotel de Ville, in a struggle that revitalized the mobilization in France. There are 69 prisoners.

The possible verdicts

If many constitutionalists hardly 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 chance.

Several verdicts were possible. Finally the wise men have chosen partial censorship or “scenario 2” among all these possibilities.

scenario 1: the Constitutional Council has 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 instruments used for its adoption.

This possibility was considered the least probable by public law specialists.

“It is almost impossible for the Sages to say yes to the entire text”, estimated the constitutional lawyer Paolo Cassia, “we would be facing something unprecedented before a reform that was legally bound in haste”.

In the event of full validation, the government would promulgate the law within two weeks, hoping to apply it “in the summer of 2023”.

“Maybe there is no way out and this law will be enacted and enforced,” CFDT general secretary Laurent Berger admitted last week.

But the unions could still turn to the Council of State for challenge the implementing decrees which 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 sage judges that part of the law – exactly 6 articles – It does not comply with the Constitution.

Among the possible reasons for refusal are the so-called “budgetary problems”. All provisions of the amending budget for social security, the government’s chosen instrument 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 the social security in France? Does the senior index, which aims to measure the employment of the elderly in companies, also find a place in the text?

“Everything that goes beyond the financial sphere can be considered a budget clause,” recalled Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council since January.

partial censorship

Partial censorship isn’t necessarily bad news for the executive branch, because the main element of the reform has been validated: the retirement age at 64 years. The government could thus promulgate the law purged of the censored passages before the unions try their luck before the Council of State.

“If there is censorship of points but not 64, then which will not respond in any way 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 requested by the parliamentarians of the left and the Liot group in the National Assembly. The total censorship of the text caused the Constitutional Council to examine the bill totally unconstitutional.

Opponents argue that MPs have not always gotten precise answers to their questions, whether it be about how many people in “full career on minimum wage” could receive a €1,200 pension or the precise starting age for long careers. Which brings into question the question of “clarity of the law”.

“The clarity of the debate was not respected in a manifest, serious and repeated way, to the point that the Council was able to say that the law did not respect the ordinary parliamentary procedure. And therefore censure the law”, judged the constitutionalist Dominique Rousseau.

Another issue that could have prompted scholars to completely censor the text: that of the lack of “sincerity of parliamentary debates”. To get the pension reform approved, the government multiplied the use of various tools of the Constitution: Article 49.3 of the National Assembly and 47.

The reactions

This was announced by Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne “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 promulgate this law in the next 48 hours”.

Warns about the risk ofa social explosion and set the land on fire.” He asked the president to do like President Jacques Chirac with the CPE and not to promulgate the law, in the name of interest and peace.

Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Grouping, said 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 arise from this useless and unjust reform ”, she said.

The leader of the left-wing Nupes, Jean Luc Mélenchon, stated that “the decision of the Constitutional Council demonstrates that it is more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy that of the sovereign people. The struggle continues and we must gather our strength.”

The reasons and the fury of 49.3

Macron saw his Renaissance party slowly fade away in the National Assembly and it does not have the majority to implement its projects.

He must “port” every vote in parties that are going through a similar crisis, but whose deputies have no sympathy for the presidential methodology.

That’s why he had to appeal to 49.3, a constitutional mechanism that allows you 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 government powers.

It has been used more than 80 times since its creation, 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 failed when the COVID pandemic broke out.

The French president’s current prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, had to turn to him again when she realized at the last minute that they had not collected 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 failed the longest strikes in the history of France. Now twelve consecutive marches show that the country is furious with the measure.

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