French President Macron wants to hold a referendum on anchoring climate protection in the Constitution. The Senate has yet to approve such a proposal.

French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed to hold a referendum vote on whether climate and environmental protection should be included in the Constitution. However, the National Assembly and the Senate still have to agree, Macron stated in a speech to the Citizens' Convention for Climate Policy in Paris.

The Citizens' Convention asked for the following sentence to be added to Article 1 of the constitution: "The republic guarantees the preservation of biodiversity and the environment and counter-acts against climate change." The citizens also called for the preamble to the constitution to be rewritten. Macron had already rejected this.

President Macron-proposed new article in the French Constitution:
The Republic guarantees the preservation of biodiversity
and the environment and counter-acts against climate change.

Citizens selected at random have been working out around 150 proposed solutions to climate issues in the convention for more than six months. Macron had spoken out in favor of some of the proposals - among other things, the proposal had already been rejected to set the speed limit on the motorway at 110 instead of the previous 130 kilometers per hour. At the beginning of the year, the French head of state was open to a referendum on climate issues.

If the proposal gets the necessary approval, it would be the first referendum since 2005 in France. The last referendum was about the EU constitution, which, however, was rejected by the citizens.