Marine Le Pen called Wednesday, October 14, from Brussels for the resignation of Richard Ferrand, after the president of the Constitutional Council publicly dismissed the far-right presidential candidate’s flagship proposal to revise the Constitution by referendum without going through Parliament.
“By making these remarks, he broke with his obligation of neutrality, and with the prohibition, enshrined in the texts, of ruling on a matter that has not yet been submitted to the Constitutional Council,” accused the leader of the Rassemblement National during a press conference.
Days earlier, the foremost Macron ally had explained that “wanting to reform the Constitution through Article 11 — that doesn’t exist. There is no debate. You just have to read the Constitution, which is not the General Tax Code.”
A Setback for the RN’s Referendum Strategy
In the fundamental law, the procedure for revising the Constitution is addressed in Article 89, which stipulates that a constitutional revision bill must be voted on in “identical terms” by the National Assembly and the Senate before approval by referendum or by a three-fifths majority of Parliament convened in Congress.
The rejection issued by Richard Ferrand is therefore very bad news for the far-right party, which indeed needs this referendum-based revision to implement key elements of its program, such as “the end of birthright citizenship and family reunification,” “national priority in access to social benefits,” and “the primacy of European law over national law.” Hence the fury that has descended upon the Council president.
When the RN Saved Ferrand’s Appointment
Yet it was precisely members of the Rassemblement National who allowed the former Socialist MP, a founder of En Marche alongside Emmanuel Macron, to take the helm of the institution in February 2025. While the left and right had opposed the appointment of this close ally of the head of state — judging him too partisan for the role — the RN had in fact chosen to abstain. A form of blessing, at the end of the suspense, that allowed Richard Ferrand to clear the decisive hurdle of the parliamentary vote.
Marine Le Pen and her troops had then justified their (non-)vote by explaining they wanted to spare the French a profile that “could have been worse.” “If Emmanuel Macron saw his choice rejected a first time because it was not validated by either the LR or the RN, he would have looked for a majority elsewhere, on the left,” MP Laurent Jacobelli had said, for instance, without convincing those opposed to the appointment.
At the time, LR group president Laurent Wauquiez had denounced (as had his troops) the nationalist party’s “complicity” with the Macron camp regarding the appointment of this longtime companion of Emmanuel Macron, who had militated for nearly forty years within the left wing of the Socialist Party. Some elected officials, on both the right and the left, even imagined a kind of “scheme,” “collusion,” or “secret agreement” between the president of the Republic and the far-right leader. Manifestly, there was none.
