“At most we will witness the holding of a referendum without much impact on the concrete lives of the French”

On December 31, 2024, at the end of his wishes to the nation, Emmanuel Macron expressed his desire to consult the French: « In 2025, I will ask you to decide on some of these defining issues. Each of you will have a role to play. » If it has not resulted, to date, in any action, the mention of resorting to a referendum is not a first in the presidential speech. The constitutional projects at the start of the first five-year term made much of referendum procedures.

It was also discussed a lot during the debates following the “yellow vest” crisis. More recently, on April 11, 2022, on the air of BFMTV, Emmanuel Macron excluded the use of a referendum « neither on pension reform nor on any reform whatsoever ». Likewise, during the Saint-Denis Meetings in the summer of 2023, he invited political parties to explore new avenues for using the referendum: « This would involve both taking up bills relating to so-called societal issues, such as the end of life, but also broader reforms affecting several intertwined aspects. », like migration issues. Likewise again, celebrating the 65^e anniversary of the V^e Republic before the Constitutional Council, he said he was in favor of an expansion of article 11 of the Constitution, in order to open the referendum to “important areas for the nation which escape it» and to simplify the implementation of the shared initiative referendum (RIP), «today excessively constrained».

How can we deny that the consequences of the dissolution give new relevance to the referendum idea? An executive that can only rely on the least minority of the minorities in the National Assembly would find in resorting to a referendum the opportunity to strengthen its legitimacy. Not without danger, of course, but, from the point of view of democratic life, the operation would have panache.