A draft law, submitted on Thursday, September 10th before being examined by the Assembly from September 30th onwards, aims to lower the minimum voting age.

• Will it soon be possible to vote from the age of 16 in France? This is the wish of MPs from the EDS group (Ecology, Democracy and Solidarity), supported by youth organisations and part of the left.
• A bill, unveiled Thursday, September 10th will be debated from September 30th in the National Assembly. The right is expected to oppose it, while the presidential majority – LREM and MoDem – has not yet shown its position.
• According to the deputies behind the text, this measure would notably help to fight abstention among young people.

It is an old issue that some MPs are preparing to revive this autumn. Should citizens be allowed to vote from the age of 16? Two former supports of President Emmanuel Macron (Paula Forteza and Mathieu Orphelin) are convinced of this and are launching an online petition, before presenting their bill to the Assembly. The deputies of the EDS group (Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity) are supported by left-wing elected representatives, ecologists, centrists and youth organisations.

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Fight against abstention?

Allowing young French people to vote is not new. Under François Hollande, the Minister for the Family, Dominique Bertinotti, had indicated that a “pre-majority” status at 16 was in the drawers, but they had finally abandoned the project. During the 2017 presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had included this measure in his programme, and Thierry Solère, the spokesman for the right-wing Les Républicains candidate François Fillon, said he was in favour of the right to vote at 16 years of age. More recently, left-wing parliamentarians had wanted to amend in this sense the draft constitutional reform of the executive which has since fallen into oblivion.

By tabling this bill, Mathieu Orphelin hopes to trigger “a nice debate in the Assembly”. “It will allow the political groups to position themselves and to discuss ways to reconcile youth and the vote. The 18-25 age group abstained significantly more than the average French voter. In Austria, studies show that the 16-18 age group votes more than the 18-25 age group,” the MP defended, taking the example of the only EU country to have set the threshold for voting at 16 years of age.