“The provisions governing the Social Security financing laws did not fall from the sky. They have a meaning

Par a talented column published in the edition of Monde of April 7, 65 teacher-researchers in social law felt that the use of an amending Social Security financing law to modify the old-age insurance scheme was unconstitutional. Their argument is simple: since the amending financing laws were devised to modify the expenditure and revenue targets for the year, they cannot mainly contain provisions concerning the years to come which would only marginally modify the conditions of the financial balance for the current financial year.

In short, according to the authors of the forum, article 47.1 was not added to the Constitution in 1996 to make structural reforms but only to ensure an annual control and vote of Parliament on the financial balance of Security social. The result would be that the very restrictive legislative procedure adopted by the government and followed by the two assemblies of Parliament to reform pensions would constitute a serious misuse of the Constitution.

Having piloted, in 1995 and 1996, the internal work of the government which led to the adoption of Article 47.1 of the Constitution and to the vote of the organic law relating to the laws for the financing of Social Security, I oppose with regret to this intellectual construction a very different interpretation which seems to have to be imposed on the Constitutional Council, since it has already validated the organic provisions which found it.

Revenue or expenditure measures

This takes nothing away from the interest of the political trial brought against the government because of the use of a doubly binding legislative procedure (article 47.1 combined with the third paragraph of article 49), after a façade social dialogue which will also have shown the government’s inability to create consensus around its proposals.

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Thus, whatever the authors of the opinion say, the provisions governing the laws on the financing of Social Security have indeed expressly provided for the option for the legislator to take measures “having an effect on the revenue of the year or later years compulsory basic schemes” (2° of B of V of article LO 111-3 of the Social Security Code), or “having an effect on the expenditure of the year or later years compulsory basic schemes” (2° of C of V of the same article LO 111-3).

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