Corsican nationalist representatives left the French Senate late on October 26 and withdrew from the Beauvau autonomy process after senators removed recognition of a distinct Corsican community and blocked autonomous legislative power.
Late on Monday, October 26, Corsican nationalist representatives left the French Senate and announced their withdrawal from the negotiation process regarding the island's autonomy.
The walkout came shortly after 10 p.m. at the Palais du Luxembourg, when nationalist senator Paul-Toussaint Parigi announced, on behalf of autonomist and independentist elected officials, their withdrawal from the Beauvau process, begun in March 2022 between the French government and Corsica's representatives.
The trigger was a series of adopted amendments. An amendment from Muriel Jourda, a Les Republicains senator and president of the law commission, removed the reference to an insular, historical, linguistic and cultural community, substituting the notion of heritage for a distinct community. A separate amendment from Corse-du-Sud senator Jean-Jacques Panunzi excluded granting autonomous legislative power to the Collectivite de Corse.
Le Monde's notification on the night recorded that the Senate rejected the constitutional reform and that the autonomist camp announced its retreat from the process, matching the walkout account in the Corsican press report. Parigi said the examination of the bill had been a permanent humiliation and that the elected officials could not continue to be humiliated like this, while former Corsican executive council president Gilles Simeoni said the conditions for continuing the process were no longer met.
The withdrawal does not legally end the parliamentary procedure, but it compromises the political agreement on which the reform was based. A constitutional revision must be adopted in the same terms by both the National Assembly and the Senate, then approved by referendum or by Congress with a three-fifths majority. Simeoni announced a consultation of nationalist forces on their return to Corsica, leaving the institutional future of the island in a new period of uncertainty.