Legal provisions for optional referendums at national level

Constitution (last amended in 2005)

Article 17. The people shall have the right of election, recall, initiative and referendum.

Referendum Act (amended date: 2018/01/03)

Article 2. The "referendums" described in this Act includes national referendums and local referendums. For national referendums, this Act shall apply to the following matters apart from those stipulated in the Constitution:

1. Referendums on laws.

2. Initiatives on legislative principles.

3. Initiatives or referendums on important policies. [...]

No proposal of referendum may be raised for any matters regarding budgeting, taxation, salary and personnel affairs.

Article 15. […] If the Legislative Yuan deems it is necessary to carry out referendums for a matter as prescribed in Subparagraph Three of Paragraph Two of Article 2, it may hand the main text and the statement of reasons, after they are adopted in a meeting of the Legislative Yuan, to the competent authority to implement the referendum. […]

Article 16. When the country is under the threat of foreign force and the national sovereignty is likely to change, the President may, by a resolution of the meeting of the Executive Yuan, put matters regarding national security to referendum.