| Amendment not needed for EU budget pact: French panel |
PARIS France’s Constitutional Council ruled on Thursday that the EU’s budget responsibility pact did not require a change to the constitution, easing its path to ratification and removing a headache for Socialist President Francois Hollande.
The ruling allows Hollande’s government, which had insisted it would not write a budgetary rule into the constitution, to press ahead with implementing the pact in September using a ‘super-law’ which it can pass with its parliamentary majority.
A constitutional reform would have required a three-fifths majority of a special joint session of parliament, forcing Hollande into an embarrassing reliance on the conservative opposition and potentially delaying ratification until December. It would have also entailed a lengthy debate on Europe which would have exposed bitter divisions in Socialist ranks, reviving painful memories of Hollande’s failure in 2005 to unify the party in support of an EU constitution, which was later rejected in a national referendum.
Many on the French left say the new pact allows Brussels to dictate national policy by allowing it to impose sanctions on countries that fail to respect a structural deficit ceiling of 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product.
In its ruling, however, the council said the treaty impinged no further on national sovereignty than existing EU budget rules, which impose deficit limits on euro zone member states. “The treaty of stability, coordination and governance ... limits itself to repeating, and reinforcing, existing engagements,” the ruling said. “There is no transfer of powers in terms of economic or budgetary policy.”
The fiscal pact, signed by EU leaders in March, must be ratified by 12 countries before it can come into force in January, with the aim of calming investors concerned at heavy public debts. Eleven EU member states have ratified the pact, excluding Germany, where the constitutional court will rule on September 12 on whether it contravenes the constitution.
Welcoming the decision, Hollande urged his government to press ahead with quickly drafting the appropriate legislation.
“The president calls on the government to rapidly prepare a draft law authorising the ratification of the pact as well as a draft organic law to guarantee the correct application of the text,” Hollande’s office said in a statement.
There has been no suggestion the Socialists would vote against such laws, although some Socialist deputies had said they would be opposed to writing the rule into the constitution. Debate within the Socialist Party over how much say EU institutions should have in national affairs is one factor hampering Hollande’s efforts to reassure Berlin that he accepts a road map to fiscal union.
Reuters
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