Promised by Emmanuel Macron, the bill integrating environmental protection into the preamble of the Constitution arrives Wednesday, January 20 in the Council of Ministers, the first step before a referendum at risk for the head of state accused by some of
" diversion ”
.
Repeated request from environmentalists, this bill plans to include in Article 1 of the Constitution that France
“guarantees the preservation of the environment and biological diversity and the fight against climate change”
.
Proof of the importance of this text for Emmanuel Macron who announced on December 14 that he wanted to submit it to a referendum, he himself validated the terms, confides a government source to AFP.
Read also: Climate: Emmanuel Macron keeps the referendum card in his pocket
But the organization of such a consultation before the presidential election of May 2022 remains uncertain because the text, which arrives at the beginning of March in the Assembly, must first be adopted in identical terms by the deputies and the senators.
However, Gérard Larcher, president of the Senate dominated by the right-wing opposition, has already given this weekend a foretaste of the verbal jousts which are announced and warned against any temptation to
"make a blow"
, denouncing a
"superfluous"
reform
.
For him, there is no question of including, as the members of the Citizen's Climate Convention wish, the fight against climate change in the preamble to the Constitution or of writing that the Republic
“must guarantee”
this fight.
Instead, Gérard Larcher proposes to mention it
"in an article at the same level as other fundamental freedoms, equality between men and women, freedom to undertake"
and to privilege the verb
"to act"
to
"Guarantee"
.
A "green cloth"
In the Assembly, the oppositions are also very reluctant: the leader of the deputies LR Damien Abad denounced a
"instrumentalisation of ecology for political ends"
and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI) has already announced that he would vote
"No"
to the referendum which he equates to
"manipulation"
.
The majority also fears
“a sausage fair”
with multiple opposition amendments that would further slow the process, in the words of one of its tenors.
In the end, the referendum
"will not be before the summer cutoff, it will necessarily be in the fall"
, according to a government source.
Majority and opposition are playing big with just over a year of the presidential election, aware that the climate issue occupies a leading role even if the Covid-19 blurs the prospects.
Environmentalists fear a purely political game.
"The great cause of this century deserves something other than small political calculations intended to sow discord on the right and on the left"
, comments Clément Sénéchal, climate policy campaigner for Greenpeace France.
For his organization, the referendum is
"a green rag"
and
"a diversion"
to
"distract from a climate bill otherwise empty of structural measures"
.
This other text, resulting from the proposals of the Citizen's Convention on the climate, must also arrive at the end of February at the Assembly and mid-June at the Senate.
Read also: Macron tries to escape the trap of the Citizen's Convention on the climate
“For the moment, it is surely the tree that hides the forest,”
admits Grégoire Fraty, co-president of the “Les 150” association, which brings together the majority of participants in the Climate Convention.
But
"a frank and massive and very powerful yes in a referendum would perhaps give the trigger that our policies lack today"
.
A long and complex process, the referendum is not without risk for Emmanuel Macron - the exercise having often taken on a plebiscite dimension during the Fifth Republic.
"It is true that during a referendum it is often more a response to the issuer than to the question"
, recognizes a relative of the Head of State.
"Afterwards, the subject is far enough away from the personal plebiscite so that the voters do not have the feeling to write a check to Macron by voting for"
, wants to believe this tenor of the majority.
If held, this referendum would be the first to be organized in France since 2005, and the victory of the No to the European Constitution, and the first on ecology.
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