Lhe Constitutional Council must render two of its most anticipated decisions of the recent period on Friday, April 14. One relates to the amending social security financing law, which sets the age of eligibility for retirement at 64; the other relates to a bill for a shared initiative referendum (RIP), which intends that this age be set at a maximum of 62 years.
When at least 185 parliamentarians have tabled an RIP bill, the Constitutional Council must verify its compliance with the Constitution, taking into account the factual and legal data, on the date it was seized – March 20. While it is undisputed that the “retirement at age 62” RIP obviously fulfills almost all of the constitutional requirements, the Prime Minister filed observations asking the Constitutional Council to reject this referendum bill, on the grounds that it would not carry a “reform” of the nation’s social policy within the meaning of Article 11.1 of the Constitution, since on March 20 the retirement age is already established by law at 62 years.
The Constitutional Council heard, on April 4, some of the parliamentarians. The members of the institution asked them a single question about the RIP: can it be analyzed as a “reform”? This term was introduced in article 11 of the Constitution by a law of August 4, 1995 signed by Alain Juppé, then Prime Minister and now constitutional adviser, to whom President Laurent Fabius entrusted the task of being rapporteur on the fate of reserve for the RIP bill. The question as to its scope is decisive, because it conditions the follow-up to be given to the RIP, in the first place the opening for nine months of the phase of collection of at least 4.8 million supporters prior to a possible referendum.
A clean litter
The Constitutional Council could, at first sight, have an argument in favor of the rejection for unconstitutionality of the RIP bill, since, in everyday language, a “reform” implies a major change in relation to the existing one. Such a position would have the political merit of corresponding to the interests of the government, to which several of the members of the Constitutional Council have been close, through their careers. But, on the one hand, the RIP bill contains a “reform” in the classic sense of the term. The current legislation does indeed include a floor, since it provides for the opening of the right to a pension “from age” fixed by different texts. The RIP bill includes a ceiling, because it aims to set a maximum for the legal retirement age, which “cannot be fixed beyond 62 years of age”which militates in favor of a tendency to reduce this legal age.
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