The honouring of membership obligations to the Council of Europe by France
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly
debate on 10 October 2023 (21st sitting) (see Doc. 15833, report of the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations
and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring
Committee), co-rapporteurs: Ms Yelyzaveta Yasko and Ms Fiona O'Loughlin). Text adopted by the Assembly on
10 October 2023 (21st sitting).
1. As a founding member, the host
country and one of the four major contributors to the Council of
Europe, of which French is one of the two official languages, France
has been very closely involved in the work of the Organisation from
the outset and has ratified some 146 conventions.
2. In 2019, France was selected by the Committee on the Honouring
of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of
Europe (Monitoring Committee) for a periodic review report on its
compliance with the obligations imposed on every Council of Europe
member State in the areas of democracy, rule of law and human rights.
The Monitoring Committee is responsible for periodically preparing
monitoring reports on compliance with the obligations of all member
States that are not subject to specific monitoring procedures.
3. France is a country with a long-standing tradition of democracy
and respect for human rights. Political pluralism is guaranteed
and freedom of association, which is a constitutional principle,
enables civil society organisations to play a very active role.
Various independent administrative bodies play a key part in checks and
balances. Human rights institutions do excellent work and are covered
by a legislative framework that protects them and respects their
independence.
4. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic established a semi-presidential
system, which is unique in Europe. The originality of the French
system lies in the position and role of the President of the Republic,
who is directly elected by the people and called on to play a central
political role in all issues affecting the political life of the country,
and also in the strict rules on the law-making and scrutiny powers
of the two chambers that make up the parliament.
5. The functioning of democratic institutions has been marked
by a succession of large-scale protest movements, sometimes accompanied
by demands of an institutional nature. Debate is under way on these issues,
focusing in particular on the introduction of direct or participatory
democracy procedures such as joint-initiative or popular-initiative
referendums or citizens’ conferences, or on the arrangements for
the use of measures that enable the government to restrict the legislative
process. Many citizens’ conferences have been held by the government
on a very wide range of issues, producing proposals that have been
debated in parliament. A draft constitutional reform tabled on 29
August 2019 that included provisions on citizen participation was
not pursued, mainly because of the health crisis linked to the Covid-19
pandemic and the lack of a political majority in favour of it. The
idea of a new institutional reform has been put forward by the authorities and
is currently the subject of consultation.
6. The Parliamentary Assembly is following with interest the
experiments with participatory democracy being conducted in France
and their links with the mechanisms of representative democracy.
The Assembly refers to the interim opinion issued by the European
Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) on Article 49.3
of the constitution at the request of the Monitoring Committee,
which found that the article allowed “significant interference by
the executive in the powers and role of the legislature”. The Assembly
will be interested to see the Venice Commission’s final opinion
and invites the government and political forces in France to take
these considerations into account in the forthcoming institutional
debates.
7. Street demonstrations have sometimes been marred by outbreaks
of violence that in some cases reached worrying levels. The law-enforcement
strategy and the use of potentially dangerous weapons have been
called into question, and a new blueprint for law enforcement has
been published.
8. In this context, the Assembly refers to the “Memorandum on
maintaining public order and freedom of assembly in the context
of the ‘yellow vest’ movement in France” published by the Commissioner
for Human Rights of the Council of Europe on 26 February 2019, and
takes note of the changes made to the law-enforcement strategy since
2021. Nevertheless, the Assembly is concerned by the finding made
again by the Commissioner for Human Rights, in her statement of
24 March 2023, that “in the context of the social movement against
the pension reform in France, the freedoms of expression and assembly
are being exercised under worrying conditions”, thereby corroborating
the concerns voiced by the Defender of Rights, the National Consultative
Committee on Human Rights and several civil society organisations.
9. The Assembly is particularly alarmed by the high number of
people injured during demonstrations, especially the number of injuries
with serious long-term consequences. In this connection, it regrets
the fact that the official statistics do not provide a clear picture
of the number of people injured or killed by law-enforcement officers
during demonstrations or the number of such officers sanctioned
or having received criminal convictions for unlawful acts of violence
committed during these demonstrations. Having such statistics would
help dispel the feeling that unlawful violence by law-enforcement
officers goes unpunished. The Assembly therefore calls on the authorities
to grant access to this information.
10. The Assembly believes that further thought should be given
to law-enforcement techniques in France, in particular by drawing
on experience in other European countries in order to refocus law
enforcement on the tasks of prevention and of supervising the exercise
of the freedom to demonstrate, through an approach aimed at calming
tensions and protecting individual freedoms.
11. In the absence of comprehensive statistics, the Assembly notes
that in several cases where the use of weapons by law-enforcement
officers has resulted in serious injuries or death, the courts have
still not handed down rulings more than four years after the events.
In many cases, no further action was taken on complaints lodged
against law-enforcement officers because it could not be established
that the injury was caused by inappropriate use of force or owing
to the difficulty of identifying the officer who had fired the weapon.
The Assembly therefore encourages the authorities to improve the
criminal law treatment of cases of unlawful violence committed by
law-enforcement officers and to reform the police and gendarmerie
inspectorates so as to improve perceptions of their independence
and impartiality, while increasing the resources allocated to them.
12. The Assembly is concerned about the finding made in the report
published in 2022 by the European Commission against Racism and
Intolerance (ECRI) that little progress has been made to effectively
prevent or take action against certain types of misconduct by law-enforcement
officers that disproportionately affect people perceived as having
an immigrant background or belonging to minority groups. A forceful
reminder of this problem came with the wave of riots that followed
the fatal shooting of a teenager by a policeman during a road traffic
check in June 2023. The Assembly therefore calls on the French authorities
to initiate a wide-ranging debate about police practices and to
take account of the recommendations by national and international
institutions on the subject, in particular ECRI’s recommendation
that the authorities introduce without delay an effective system
of recording identity checks by law-enforcement officials, “as part
of a policy aimed at strengthening mutual trust between them and
the public and their contribution to preventing and combating all
forms of discrimination”.
13. The Assembly is concerned to note that the issue of mutual
trust between law-enforcement officials and the public is highly
polarised, with statements by some political and trade union representatives
sometimes veering towards hate speech. In this connection, the Assembly
refers to ECRI’s recommendation that “political figures on all sides
take a firm and public stance against any racist or LGBTI-phobic
hate speech, and respond with strong counter-speech”.
14. The Assembly congratulates France on the inclusive and transparent
process followed in discussing and analysing the legal system, which
led to an initial series of proposed legislative and institutional
reforms being debated in parliament. In particular, the Assembly
welcomes the announcement of an unprecedented increase in the financial
and human resources allocated to the judicial system. The Assembly
encourages the French Government to move ahead with the reform process
under way by tabling the constitutional bill necessary for completing
the reforms of the judicial system recommended by the Venice Commission
and the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Human Rights
and Rule of Law in the joint opinion on the Superior Council of Magistracy
and the status of the judiciary as regards nominations, mutations,
promotions and disciplinary procedures, published on 13 June 2023,
and invites the political forces represented in parliament to find
ways of reaching a compromise for its adoption.
15. With regard to the Superior Council of Magistracy, the Assembly
notes that the joint opinion recommends, in particular, that France:
15.1 amend the first paragraph of
Article 64 of the constitution in order to clarify the primary role
of the Superior Council of Magistracy as guarantor of the independence
of the judiciary;
15.2 bring the text of the constitution into line with the
consistent practice of the authorities and the case law of the European
Court of Human Rights and do away with the possibility for the Minister
of Justice to sit on the Superior Council of Magistracy;
15.3 modify the composition of the section of the Superior
Council of Magistracy with jurisdiction over judges by increasing
the number of judicial members.
16. With regard to the status of members of the judiciary, the
Assembly points out that the joint opinion recommends:
16.1 assigning the Superior Council
of Magistracy the power to modify appointment proposals made by
the Minister of Justice;
16.2 proceeding with the constitutional and legislative reforms
needed to align the appointments procedure for prosecutors and the
disciplinary procedure for members of the prosecution service with the
current procedure for judges;
16.3 transferring from the Minister of Justice to the Superior
Council of Magistracy the power to initiate disciplinary proceedings ex officio and to request the Inspectorate
General of the Justice System to carry out an investigation.
17. The Assembly is closely following the execution of the judgments
of the European Court of Human Rights concerning France, in particular
the series of judgments ordering it to put an end to a situation
of systemic prison overcrowding that causes detention conditions
in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights
(ETS No. 5), which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
18. The Assembly welcomes the many measures decided upon by the
authorities to reduce prison overcrowding, in particular the announcements
concerning the building of additional prison capacity, the efforts to
improve the distribution of inmates between prisons and the efforts
to raise judges’ and prosecutors’ awareness of possible alternatives
to imprisonment. Nevertheless, it notes that the relevant national
and international authorities believe that the programme to create
new prison places will not provide a lasting solution within a reasonable
time frame, while the prison population statistics show that the
situation is steadily worsening. The Assembly therefore refers to
the decision adopted on 6 December 2022 by the Committee of Ministers
of the Council of Europe, which, in view of the consistent recommendations
of several competent national institutions and the urgency of the
situation, “invited again the authorities to consider rapidly new legislative
measures that would regulate the prison population in a more binding
nature”.
19. The Assembly notes with interest the conclusions of recent
parliamentary work stating that the judicial measures to limit the
use of detention have failed to reduce prison overcrowding and that
it is necessary to establish a binding mechanism for regulating
the prison population, while proposing a method for implementing this
solution gradually and without disrupting the execution of sentences.
The Assembly therefore calls on the authorities to try out a binding
mechanism for regulating the prison population, at least until such
time as the other measures to reduce the prison population have
an effect and make such a mechanism unnecessary.
20. Media freedom, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression
are guaranteed effectively in France. Restrictions do exist, as
strictly defined by law, in order to protect privacy and image rights
and to prevent defamation, public insult, the condoning of terrorism,
publication of fake news and hate speech. The conditions for working
as a journalist are well protected. The Assembly welcomes the planned
reform of civil procedure to improve the protection of journalists
against vexatious proceedings.
21. The Assembly notes the concerns that exist because of the
impact of the trend towards media concentration on pluralism of
information. The Assembly is pleased to note the opening of the
national consultation process, “États généraux de l’information”,
and will follow this work with great interest. The Assembly encourages
the French authorities to adjust the regulatory environment to the
sweeping changes in the media sector so as to improve the transparency
of media ownership and guarantee internal and external media pluralism.
22. The Assembly welcomes the advances in the regulation of political
financing adopted since 2016, in particular the prohibition of loans
from banks headquartered outside the European Union and the limit
on the amount natural persons may donate. The Assembly refers to
the recommendations by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)
and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR)
aimed at improving the transparency of political financing.
23. The Assembly congratulates the French authorities on the efforts
to combat violence against women, in particular the many measures
announced since 2019, and on their unequivocal commitment in this
area. The Assembly calls for these announcements to be given full
effect by allocating the resources needed for implementing this
policy.
