PARIS — The French National Assembly on Friday rejected a constitutional reform bill aimed at reshaping New Caledonia’s status, adopting a preliminary rejection motion without debate by 190 votes to 107. The vote, filed by left‑wing opposition deputy Emmanuel Tjibaou on behalf of the Gauche démocrate et républicaine (GDR) group, effectively closed the Assembly’s current sitting on the text and means the measure will now have to return to the Senate under the so‑called “shuttle” procedure.
The sitting lasted just one hour and 40 minutes. Government representatives, including Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou and rapporteur Philippe Gosselin, presented the bill’s motives, but opposition benches coalesced behind Tjibaou’s motion and voted to block further debate. The bill had been due to be discussed on April 1 but was postponed by Speaker Yaël Braun‑Pivet to Thursday’s sitting.
Tjibaou, one of New Caledonia’s two deputies in the Assembly and a Kanak pro‑independence figure, told colleagues the draft constitutional amendment was “not consensual” because the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) opposed it and the government had not sought a compromise with all stakeholders. He described the measure as at best “symbolic,” warning it would amount to “a perennial status within France” and a “logic of assimilation” that could not be equated with decolonisation under United Nations resolutions and earlier accords.
The contested text, known as the Bougival‑Élysée‑Oudinot (BEO) project after talks in July 2025 in Bougival and further meetings in January 2026 at the Élysée and the ministry for Overseas in Rue Oudinot, envisaged creating a “State of New Caledonia” and a corresponding “New Caledonia Nationality” for people who are already French citizens. Proponents framed the package as a package of constitutional and organic law changes that would in practice become New Caledonia’s new constitutional framework.
But the BEO process has been divisive. In August 2025 the FLNKS publicly rejected the text, arguing that the proposed transfer of powers from Paris to Nouméa and the new status amounted to a “lure” rather than a genuine path to independence. Some pro‑independence figures split from the FLNKS to form a new group, UNI (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), and have continued to endorse the BEO negotiations, highlighting a split within pro‑independence ranks over the proposals.
The Assembly’s preliminary rejection does not kill the project outright but sends it back into the legislative corridor and is likely to prolong the political standoff. Under the “prior rejection” mechanism used on Thursday, the measure will now follow the constitutional “shuttle” between the two houses of Parliament, reopening the possibility of further debate, amendments or renewed negotiation in the Senate and between political actors in New Caledonia and Paris. The outcome underscores the deep fractures over how France should manage the future of its Pacific territory and the contested interpretation of earlier Matignon‑Oudinot and Nouméa accords that set out a gradual decolonisation framework.
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