The right-wing majority Senate adopted on Thursday March 18 at first reading the controversial LREM bill on "global security", after having largely rewritten it, with in particular a new article 24 which creates an offense of "provocation to" identification ”of police officers.
Renamed "for a new security pact respecting freedoms", it was voted by 238 votes in favor and 98 against.
"It is a bit the signature of the crime: you are obliged to write
" freedoms "
in the title so it is obvious that this law affects them"
, launched Pierre Laurent (CRCE with communist majority) in the senatorial majority.
To read also: Police: towards a crime of provocation to the identification
Deputies and senators will try to agree on a common text.
In case of failure, a new reading will be organized in both chambers, the last word going to the National Assembly.
The main novelty brought by the upper house is the rewriting of article 24 which must protect the police in operation, but crystallized the criticisms, causing an outcry among journalists.
The senators' version no longer refers to the 1881 law on freedom of the press, but aims to create in the penal code a new offense of "provocation to identification".
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin reaffirmed that the government
“trusted”
the Parliament for the drafting, as long as the desired goal, namely the protection of police and gendarmes in operation, was preserved.
Carrying of weapons by off-duty police officers
The upper house voted for the device aimed at facilitating the use of pedestrian cameras by police officers, but after removing the possibility for the police to broadcast the images of their interventions in the media or on social networks.
Still on the aspect devoted to images, the Senate tightened the legal framework for the use of drones, to take into account the observations of the National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms (Cnil).
It also provided for the development by the Ministry of the Interior of a
“drone employment doctrine”
.
It also adopted without modification the provision aimed at authorizing the carrying of weapons by off-duty police officers in places open to the public, despite opposition from elected officials from all sides.
The senators had previously given their approval to the expansion, on an experimental basis for five years, of the powers of municipal police officers.
They had also approved the
“historic”
creation
of a municipal police force in Paris.
The bill still provides for a framework for private security, relaxed on several points by the senators.
Read also: What the “Global Security” Bill contains
The left has scrapped all week against the text which according to the Minister of the Interior
"will significantly improve the work of the security continuum"
.
“We don't fundamentally believe in the safety continuum.
In the end, we will have a leopard skin
,
”
said Jérôme Durain (PS), while the ecologist Esther Benbassa regretted that“ the public authorities are taking an increasingly repressive path ”.
Françoise Gattel (centrist), on the contrary, defended
“the possibility given to exercise one's freedom in safety”
.
The LR chairman of the Law Commission François-Noël Buffet welcomed the fact that the work of the Senate had made it possible to
"bring back a little serenity"
after the heated debates of last November.
