France signed on to the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) in 1992, and is thereby required to negotiate with the other nuclear states the total and duly controlled elimination of their nuclear arms. But far from trying to do so, every French president has continued to modernise France’s weapons, thus flouting that promise, and international law, and France’s constitution.
Monsieur Macron has increased as never before the billions devoted to the nuclear strike force, called "deterrent force", which is just good enough to provoke the destruction of France, as president Giscard d’Estaing clearly admitted in his memoirs. For nuclear arms are not just illegal and criminal, they are suicidal.
Do the French people realise the full danger represented by a Head of State with nuclear weapons? Given the way Macron has dissolved the National Assembly without even warning the PM, one may suspect that he will consult no one before using his atomic briefcase. Therefore we must take this exorbitant power away from him, and all other current and potential presidents, French or foreign. This means excluding the RN party (the right-wing Rassemblement National).
Indeed the RN in February 2023 lodged a bill, number 825, aimed as "inscribing the nuclear deterrent force in the stone tablets of the Constitution", so that it would no longer be subject to "any abandonment, any cession or any sharing."".
This "constitutionalising" of nuclear arms would forbid France to negotiate their elimination, making her a perpetual international delinquant. Further, it would prevent the holding of any referendum on this question, which is a crucial one. And why? Because repeated polls by IFOP (October 2015, July 2018, September 2022), show that at least 70% of French voters want to abolish nuclear and radioactive weapons and wish to be consulted on this matter by referendum. So the RN would forbid the people from being consulted when they, manifestly, don’t share its opinion.
ACDN, for its part, is asking candidates in the parliamentary elections to support, if elected, its referendum bill aimed at organising a "shared-initiative" referendum on this legal text:
"Article 1. That France take part in the abolition of nuclear and radioactive weapons and engage with all the States concerned in negotiations aimed at drawing up, ratifying and implementing a treaty to ban and completely eliminate nuclear and radioactive weapons, under mutual and international control that is strict and effective?"
Article 2. That Article 1 above be submitted to all French citizens by referendum, in accordance with Article 11, part 3, of Constitution."
ACDN now invites voters to put this question to candidates, and to block the RN and all the other partisans of nukes, hidden or not, by voting for candidates openly determined to act for nuclear abolition.
