Six months after the start of the violence which left 13 dead and billions of euros in damage, the presidents of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and the Senate Gérard Larcher are traveling this Saturday to a complex consultation mission in New Caledonia.
In an interview with Le Monde published on Saturday, the two presidents called for do not focus only on the political issuebut also to move forward on the New Caledonian nickel crisis, the economic heart of the archipelago. “Everything is linked“, There is “a chance to reach a comprehensive settlement“, estimates Yaël Braun-Pivet. She also warns, our movement is “a new step, not the last“.
Gérard Larcher specifies for his part, “we are here to help with humility“. “We need a new method (…) be careful about wanting to force“, solutions must”be prepared on Caledonian soil“, he adds, believing that it is possible to find “a way to go very advanced autonomy without breaking ties with the republic“.
Three days of travel
The presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate were instructed, by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, to travel to New Caledonia to renew institutional dialogue between the loyalist and independence camps on the status of the island, still at a standstill.
Three days of meetings with political, economic, trade union forces and the New Caledonian people are on the agenda for their trip. They will go in particular from Monday morning – Nouméa time, Sunday evening in mainland France – to the customary Senate, before a solemn session at the Congress of New Caledonia, Tuesday, during which they will speak in front of elected officials.
A highly sensitive constitutional reform
The historic riots which began last May were triggered by the desire of the former government to adopt a highly sensitive constitutional reform on the expansion of the electoral body for provincial elections. In response, the new Barnier coalition sent signs of appeasement: it abandoned the reform and the provincial elections were postponed until November 2025 at the latest.
Three self-determination referendums, provided for by the Nouméa Accords in 1998, have been held since 2021, with the victory of the “no” vote for independence. But questions remain about the institutional future of the archipelago. The question of reconstruction is also major. The cost of the riots is estimated at at least 2.2 billion euros by the New Caledonian government, or 25% of the territory’s GDP.
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