Pierre Charron is a public law student at Paris II.
To everyone's surprise, and while he seemed to want to bury a citizens' convention that he himself had created, the President of the Republic announced his desire to organize a referendum on the revision of article 1 of the Constitution. .
Far from Gaullian initiatives, Emmanuel Macron cannot decide alone on this popular consultation.
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It's almost a ritual.
To the chagrin of certain constitutional experts, each President is going about his constitutional reform.
Since 1958, the supreme norm of the Fifth Republic has undergone twenty-four reforms.
If Montesquieu affirmed that one should "
touch the Constitution only with a trembling hand
", it would seem that those of our legislators lack excitement.
Refusing to carry the slightest evolution would amount to condemning the regime, but in the troubled hour of liquid society, there are benchmarks that we would like to see last.
15 years after the NO to the constitutional treaty, we would have hoped for a referendum on representation, on immigration or security, on social or health matters, nay.
Article 1 of the Constitution contains the main principles of our Republic: uniqueness, secularism, decentralization, etc. While the State seems incapable of enforcing them, we would therefore like to add a new one.
Will the third be the right one?
All eyes will turn to the Senate
The current majority have gone twice to initiate a review.
And twice, she had to give up, prevented by an uncertain senatorial majority or entangled in the Benalla affair.
Let us give credit to Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the Law Commission, for having done everything she could in the area of institutions.
Will the third be the right one?
All eyes will turn to the Senate.
Because in this procedure provided for in article 89 of the Constitution, the two chambers will have to agree on the same text, and the presidential party will deal with the troops of Bruno Retailleau, who did not wait to attack at the presidential initiative.
Immediately, many shouted demagoguery, correctly pointing out that no one was going to vote against the climate, accusing Emmanuel Macron of seeking a plebiscite a few months before the Presidential election.
It will be appropriate, if the public debate opens, to recall some elements which could come to thwart the plans of the President.
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First, because this reform seems quite unnecessary.
The Environmental Charter adopted under Chirac has been integrated into the constitutionality block since 2005, establishing the “
duty of preservation and improvement of the environment
” of its article 2, among the requirements that the laws must respect.
The principles of prevention, precaution and polluter pays have long been established.
In fact, constitutional jurisprudence has already taken note of this.
In 2019, for example, when the Constitutional Council invokes the Charter to enshrine the preservation of the environment as a higher stake than the freedom to undertake.
With one stone, he condemns EELV to commit to a timid YES to its reform, and sets a trap for the right
Then, because this announcement with great pomp hardly masks a double maneuver that François Hollande would not have denied.
Emmanuel Macron's electoral base is heterogeneous, like his “
at the same time
”.
The porosity of part of its electorate with Europe Ecology the Greens is no longer to be demonstrated.
The security sequence weakened him on his left, and Brut's ugly interview will not be enough to appease a section of his electorate.
So Macron takes the French as a witness.
With one stone, he condemns EELV to commit to a timid YES to its reform, and sets a trap for the right: if the referendum procedure does not succeed, the inaction will be attributable to Larcher.
Finally, because Emmanuel Macron's record in terms of ecology can be summed up in the minds of many to the closure of a nuclear power station (Fessenheim) which will have led France to relight four coal-fired power stations of identical power. to the two reactors now inactive.
In September, these plants, which are scheduled to close for 2022, burned tonnes of black ore, releasing sulfur, carbon dioxide and nitrogen into the atmosphere.
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Let us add that the delays in offshore wind power and the Flamanville EPR are pushing the French to question the closure of 14 nuclear reactors by 2035, another decision confirmed by the five-year term.
The absence of a credible alternative to nuclear energy is today a reality in the eyes of a good part, except to replace it by fossil fuels, and to abandon our status of good European pupil.
However, Bruno Retailleau and Larcher will undoubtedly think twice before retoking the proposed revision.
Serving such an argument to the future candidate Macron could be risky for a right which is already struggling to exist between the two finalists of 2017.