A large cross-party group of French opposition parliamentarians have launched a bid to force the calling of a public referendum over the plans of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government to privatise the Paris airports operator Aéroports de Paris (ADP).
The opposition coalition of 218 leftwing and rightwing members of both the upper and lower houses, the Senate and National Assembly, are using a never previously used article of the constitution in an attempt to block the government’s planned sell-off of the state’s majority stake in ADP, which operates the Charles-de-Gaulle, Orly and Le Bourget airports.
The privatisation was finally approved on Thursday by the National Assembly, where Macron’s LREM party has a comfortable majority, as part of a raft of measures in legislation to reform business regulations. The adoption of the legislation followed its ping-pong passage over several months through the lower and upper houses.
The group of senators and National Assembly members (MPs) calling for the referendum represent almost all of the parliamentary opposition to President Macron’s ruling centrist LREM party, an unusual alliance ranging from the communists to the conservatives. They object to the plan on the grounds that the state would lose control of what they call a “strategic tool” of economic policy.
The government’s move to privatise the ADP, which was initially obscured last summer by the scandal that erupted over President Emmanuel Macron’s disgraced security aide Alexandre Benalla, was introduced amid a jumble of measures contained in the so-called “Pacte” draft legislation which was approved on Thursday. An "action plan for business growth and transformation", the legislation is a vast catalogue of reforms aimed broadly at freeing up regulations governing businesses, but which also includes certain financial measures in favour of employees. The sell-off of the French state’s majority stake in ADP, along with that in the national lottery and scratch-card operator, FDJ, was presented as a means of financing the raft of other measures in the Pacte reforms.
The opposition parliamentarians held a press conference on Tuesday at the National Assembly when they presented the text of their official demand for a referendum and announced they had garnered enough signatures of support for the move as required by the constitution. That means that they have the requisite number of signatures to back a piece of draft legislation for the referendum to be put before parliament.
What is officially called a “shared referendum initiative” was introduced in a reform of the constitution in 2008, and it can only be called for if a minimum of 185 members of parliament sign up to the bid. It must then be approved by France’s Constitutional Council, and subsequently must gain the support of a tenth of the electorate.
While the government was aware of the opposition parties’ plan to bid for a referendum, the complexities of the procedure are such that it appeared probable they would fail to meet the legal requirements. Passing the first hurdle of gaining a minimum of 185 signatures of support from parliamentarians is generally unlikely given the political divide on most issues. Last autumn, leftwing parties attempted a move for a referendum to demand the re-introduction of the former ISF wealth tax, but failed when they garnered only 155 signatures of support.
In the case of the privatisation of ADP, opposition to the plan united a broad front of the Right and Left. At their press conference on Tuesday, the opposition lawmakers included members of the Socialist Party, the radical-left France Insoumise party, the conservative Les Républicains party and the Communist Party.
In the text of their official presentation of the referendum bid, the parliamentarians recognised what they said were the previous mistakes of governments of both the Left and the Right in the privatisations of France’s motorways and regional airports, and called on the government to “not reproduce the errors linked to the privatisation of strategic infrastructures that are monopolies”.
“An airport is not a company like others,” they wrote in the introduction. “It is a strategic tool of economic policy.”
But the opposition group must now rapidly submit their call for a referendum before France’s Constitutional Council, which they were expected to do early Thursday before the final vote in the National Assembly on the draft Pacte reforms.
The urgency is because the constitution sets out that a “shared referendum initiative” can only apply to a law if it was promulgated at least one year earlier, and the government is now likely to promulgate the legislation after its adoption by parliament. The opposition parliamentarians must therefore submit their case to the Constitutional Council before that happens.
From the moment that the opposition group present their draft legislation for the referendum, the Constitutional Council has one month to rule on its validity. It could decide to reject it, such as on the grounds that, while admitting the technical argument that the Pacte reform law has not yet been promulgated, the referendum move is aimed at overriding a decision by the National Assembly. Or it may well rule that it meets the requirements of the constitution. Either way, its decision will have significant political consequences – including with regard to the Council itself.
For the government, a decision by the Constitutional Council in favour of the referendum would represent a significant blow. It would prevent the rapid promulgation of the Pacte reforms, or at the very least the privatisation of ADP, and while the government insists that the business world is impatient to see the introduction of the reforms which it argues will “free up growth and employment”, the sell off of ADP is clearly of major importance to it.
But even if the Constitutional Council rules in their favour, the opposition parliamentarians still face an uphill struggle, beginning with the requirement of receiving support for the referendum from a tenth of the electorate, representing around 4.5 million people, in a consultation period of nine months. “Four and a half million signatures are a lot,” noted socialist senator Olivier Jacquin. “Can ADP mobilise as many people?”
These and yet other requirements demonstrate that while the “shared referendum initiative” is theoretically possible, in practical terms it is nearly impossible. Meanwhile, supporters of the referendum quietly fear that the public will lose interest in the project, while the government can be expected, on its past form in face of opposition to its reforms, to brandisharguments of anti-parliamentarianism. “The match is almost over, they know they have lost and they’re trying to replay it,” said Roland Lescure, LREM MP and general rapporteur of the Pacte reform legislation, in reaction to the referendum move.
During the bill’s second reading in the Senate this week, junior economy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, representing the government, responded sharply to an opposition senator’s criticism of the details of the privatisations in the proposed Pacte legislation, which he said were obscure. “To talk of a capitalism of connivance is unacceptable, even irresponsible,” she said, before suggesting the senator had adopted the slogans of the ‘yellow vest’ anti-government protest movement. “I wouldn’t allow myself to pick up on other suggestions that figure in the referendum propositions [by the ‘yellow vest’ movement], like the abolition of the Senate.”
A battle has been engaged between parliament and the presidency over which of them has greater legitimacy. But it is the government, through its manner of action, which has provoked it, as the senators underlined during the second passage before them of the Pacte bill earlier this week. After the previous rejection by the government and the ruling majority in the National Assembly of all their proposed amendments to it, the senators voted in favour of a motion to reject the draft legislation without further debate.
Senator Philippe Adnot, an independent member of the upper house, speaking shortly before that vote, said he was “normally” against such a procedure that halted debate because it was a “negation” of parliament’s role. “But I will make an exception today […] because the discussion is closed,” he said.
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Update: this article was amended after publication on Thursday after the definitive adoption by the National Assembly of the Pacte legislation, including the privatisation of ADP.
- The original French version of this article can be found here.