Overview
- A tribune published in Le Monde on Wednesday, November 11, gathered 110 constitutional law academics who call Marine Le Pen’s plan to bypass Parliament and revise the Constitution by presidential referendum legally irregular.
- The signatories say the dispute turns on Article 11, which covers certain referendums, and Article 89, which requires identical votes in the National Assembly and the Senate before any constitutional change can be submitted to a referendum.
- Richard Ferrand, the president of the Constitutional Council, made a similar judgment in mid-October and the academics say current law gives the Council competence to review and annul any presidential decree that would convoke a referendum aimed at constitutional revision.
- The scholars stress the 1962 de Gaulle precedent cited by the RN does not settle the question because constitutional practice and judicial oversight have evolved, and they warn that allowing the bypass would create a precedent later presidents could exploit.
- Politically, the RN’s incentive to seek Article 11 stems from the Senate’s likely resistance to formal revision, and a blocked referendum or Council annulment would trigger a high-stakes institutional confrontation with real effects on migration policy proposals and on citizens’ rights.