Referendum: “I don’t need competitors for legitimacy”, warns Yaël Braun-Pivet

In direction of extra frequent use of the referendum? That is what the Head of State prompt when he spoke on Wednesday to have a good time the sixty fifth anniversary of the Fifth Republic. Earlier than the Constitutional Council, he spoke of his want to broaden the probabilities of recourse to the referendum, the circumstances of that are at present very strict. Ought to we even contact it? “It’s essential,” replies Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the Nationwide Meeting, to Sonia Mabrouk’s microphone.

“Important for our democracy”

“It’s been greater than 15 years since we final held a referendum in France and I discover that missing. We have to contain our fellow residents extra [aux décisions politiques], we have to hearken to them and above all we have to ship them an actual gesture of belief. So consulting them on topics that concern them, I feel it’s vital for our democracy and for rebuilding a nation,” she confides.

A fervent supporter of the referendum, the President of the Nationwide Meeting had proposed the thought of ​​an annual day of referendum and citizen consultations, on the event of the evaluation of her first yr in workplace. With one reservation, nonetheless: don’t oppose the phrases of the folks to these of elected officers, on the identical topics. “With reference to immigration, for instance, Parliament is seized. And the President reminded us yesterday, we should not pit the folks and the nationwide illustration towards one another, just because the legislative course of has been initiated, Parliament is working immediately on the query of immigration, the Senate is seized and the Nationwide Meeting will quickly be seized of the talk, in a number of weeks”, she explains.

Questions of timing, she defends, for the immigration invoice but in addition on pensions. “We should not, after deliberation of the nationwide illustration, attempt to oppose this deliberation, the deliberation of the folks. I don’t want competitors for legitimacy,” insists Yaël Braun-Pivet. Nevertheless, the president stays open on societal topics for which Parliament will not be seized, such because the query of the tip of life (euthanasia) and even common nationwide service.