During a debate held on the evening of 10 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe examined a report on France’s honouring of membership obligations to the Council of Europe.
Closed by a resolution (44 votes in favour, 19 against and 4 abstentions), this debate is part of a procedure introduced in 2017 to periodically examine the state of the Rule of law, democracy and human rights in each of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe.
Among the positive points, the resolution notes “with interest” the experiments in participatory democracy currently being conducted in France.
However, the assembly is concerned about the use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a bill to be passed without a vote in the National Assembly.
Quoting the constitutional experts of the Venice Commission consulted for this report, it considers that the 49.3 allows “significant interference by the executive in the powers and role of the legislature”.
This “interim opinion” from the Venice Commission will be followed by a “final opinion” to take “these considerations into account in the forthcoming institutional debates”.
Another sensitive issue is the allegations of police violence that have occurred during demonstrations linked, in particular, to the ‘gillets jaunes’ (‘yellow vest’) movement or pension reform.
Based on the findings of the Commissioner for Human Rights between 2017 and 2023, the Assembly is calling for policing to “refocus” on the “tasks of prevention and of supervising the exercise of the freedom to demonstrate”.
It is also calling for “a wide-ranging debate about police practices” in order to prevent or take action against “certain types of misconduct” towards people perceived as having an immigrant background or belonging to minority groups.
Overcrowding in prisons and media concentration were also called into question by the Assembly.
Link to resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/8zw (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)