PARIS – The French parliament on Thursday passed a controversial security bill that expands police powers, despite criticism from political opponents and civil rights activists who have vowed to challenge legislation before France’s Constitutional Council.
The bill expands, among other things, the powers of municipal police forces, expands the police’s ability to use drones to monitor civilians in public, and punishes the punishment on people convicted of assaulting officers. One of the most difficult discussion measures is criminalizing the act of identifying officers with the intent to harm them.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government has argued that the bill provides a vital boost to disputed police forces and protects them from increasingly violent protesters and malicious attempts to identify them or their families, outside and online.
But critics – including French journalists, civil liberties groups and the government’s own human rights ombudsman – say the legislation is too broad.
“In the hands of an authoritarian government, such a law would become a dangerous weapon of surveillance and oppression of the people,” Cécile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, said in a statement this week.
The bill received 75 votes in favor and 33 against in the National Assembly, the French lower house of France, where Macron’s party has a majority.
But it is expected to be examined in the coming weeks by the Constitutional Council, which is reviewing legislation to ensure it complies with the French Constitution and can destroy parts of the bill.
Opposition to the bill sparked huge protests this autumn and were fueled by several widely publicized cases of police brutality, most notably the beatings of a black music producer in Paris who were caught on security cameras in November.
While the protests put pressure on the government to rewrite a provision on the sharing of images of police, he refused to heed calls from opponents to scrap the entire bill.
The sharing of images is not explicitly mentioned in the final version of the bill passed Thursday. But in Article 24, the bill criminalizes the act of helping to identify conscripted police officers with the “obvious intent” to harm them physically or psychologically. Offenders would face up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, about $ 89,800.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who advocated the bill, told lawmakers on Thursday that it would be France’s “disgrace” if it did not prevent malicious people from spreading information or photos of security forces in public. .
“Police officers and gendarmes are children of the Republic, and they need to be protected because they protect us every day,” he said. Darmanin said.
To bolster his argument, Mr. Darmanin reported an incident in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, where photos of local officials were taken from their social media accounts, printed and posted on buildings the minister described as spots. for drug trafficking, call it an act of intimidation.
“While some moralizers are repeatedly trying to break down the security bill and especially section 24, the police are bearing the consequences,” the Unité SGP police union said in a statement. statement after the photos were discovered.
Police unions have long complained that officers are overloaded and underestimated, and after years of deadly terrorist attacks, violent protests of the yellow vest are suppressed and strict closure of Covid-19 is enforced, the unions welcomed steps to protect officers.
But the bill also comes amid growing and increasingly tense debates over police brutality and racism in France, after years of controversy over deadly or brutal police interventions.
Over the past few months, six NGOs have taken rare legal action to enforce a overhaul of the country’s policing, and Macron’s government has launched an online platform to consult citizens on issues of discrimination.
Opponents of the bill say it does not have adequate guarantees, for example against police drones that infringe on people’s privacy. They also argue that the provision aimed at preventing the malicious identification of police officers is still too public for interpretation, and that it is attempts to record or document the cruelty of the police, including by journalists.
Alexis Corbière, a lawmaker from the left-wing France Unbowed party who opposed the bill, told the National Assembly on Thursday that the bill does nothing to “cultivate the necessary trust between citizens and their police”.
“This leaves the role of the police suspicious,” said Mr. Corbière said. “It gives the impression that this essential public service cannot come under the criticism of the citizen.”