Accumulation of mandates, proportional to the legislative elections, referendum… This is what the transpartisan working group will work on, in particular, which will be launched, “in two weeks”, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the President of the National Assembly. The objective is to reflect, “with the horizon of the end of June”, on several themes around the reform of institutions.
“It’s the right time, because reforming our institutions is one of the responses to the growing mistrust of the political class, to the ever-increasing abstention, to the acts of violence against elected officials”, explains- she, in an interview given to the JDD. The creation of this cross-partisan group responds to Emmanuel Macron’s request, made during his television address on April 17, to reflect on proposals so that “the functioning of our institutions becomes more efficient and citizen participation”.
Composed of the group presidents of the National Assembly, it will in particular examine the question of restoring the accumulation of mandates. The questions around the mandates are “multiple”, noted Yaël Braun-Pivet. “Should they be limited to three consecutive? Go back to the presidential term? Establish midterms with midterm legislative elections? So many topics that the group will have to answer.
Another file on which the President of the Assembly wishes to dwell: the introduction of a dose of proportionality in the legislative elections. Idea to which she said she was “rather personally in favor”. “Our fellow citizens seem to be satisfied with the absence of an absolute majority in a National Assembly where all political forces are represented,” she noted. “The introduction of a proportional dose would make it possible to perpetuate this state of affairs. »
She pleads, finally, to “rethink” the operation of the referendum, whether it is of shared or presidential initiative, “to make it more accessible and effective”.
At the beginning of February, Emmanuel Macron had discreetly reopened the file of the reform of the institutions, presented by his camp as one of the major projects of the post-pension reform, by receiving successively at the Élysée Palace François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Any revision of the Constitution presented by the executive must be adopted in the same terms by both chambers of Parliament and ultimately obtain a three-fifths majority of parliamentarians, which requires broad cross-party compromises. During his first five-year term, the president had come up against the Senate, which was mainly on the right, and failed to bring about a reform which provided for a dose of proportionality in the method of electing deputies, reducing the number of parliamentarians, but also limiting of their mandate to three in a row.
