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The sages of the rue de Montpensier do not always sit there.
This Tuesday, the nine members of the Constitutional Council traveled all day to Bordeaux, to examine in public hearing a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) relating to the Mediator affair.
A relocation to New Aquitaine to "
make known what the institutions of the Republic are
", explains Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council.
This institution, founded with the Fifth Republic, aims to ensure that laws comply with the Constitution and its principles.
Several times a year, the Board thus travels outside of Paris.
After Metz, Nantes and Pau in 2019, Lyon in 2020, Bourges in 2021, Marseille and Montpellier in 2022, Bordeaux was chosen as the eighth relocation site.
A destination that is not insignificant for one of the nine Sages, Alain Juppé, chosen to sit on the Constitutional Council in 2019 while still exercising his functions as mayor of Bordeaux.
“
It is a great pleasure to find this city
”, confides the former Prime Minister on the steps of the Court of Appeal, he who was at the head for more than twenty years.
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This Tuesday, about 200 people gathered under the high ceilings of the Montesquieu room of the Court of Appeal, Place de la République, to attend this session which has all the exercise of pedagogy, while donning the trappings of a real trial, with the arguments of the lawyers of the different parties.
On the benches, many lawyers and law students.
For an hour, they listened to the lawyers plead and the Elders ask them questions.
All related, not to the case as such, but to the possibility of non-respect of the Constitution by the Civil Code.
A possible violation of the principle of equality before the law
The priority question of constitutionality is a recent mechanism, which allows any citizen to seize the judge during a trial, if he considers that the law which is applied to him is not contrary to the Constitution.
In this case, the QPC examined in Bordeaux was raised before the Nanterre court, which transferred it to the Court of Cassation, which then ruled that the conditions were met for the Constitutional Council to be seized.
Implemented in 2010, this mechanism for referral by the litigant has already had a certain echo, since the bar of 1000 QPCs transmitted to the Elders was crossed in April 2022. They represent approximately 80% of the decisions rendered by the Constitutional Council.
The QPC examined in Bordeaux is part of the Mediator affair, a drug marketed by Servier laboratories until 2009 and which would have caused the death of several thousand people.
In the context of liability for defective products, article 1245 of the Civil Code specifies that the producer is "
responsible for the damage caused by a defect in his product, whether or not he is bound by a contract with the victim
". .
Exemptions are possible, but article 1386-12 provides that the producer "
cannot invoke the cause of exemption [...] when the damage has been caused by an element of the human body or by products derived from this one
".
It is this provision which could imply differences in treatment between victims and therefore undermine the principle of equality before the law, protected by the Constitution.
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The question posed to the Elders “
is not of obvious simplicity
”, confesses Laurent Fabius.
However, the decision of the nine Sages will be taken fairly quickly.
When seized of a QPC, the Constitutional Council must express itself within three months.
Laurent Fabius has already planned to return to Bordeaux on March 10 to " make the
Council's
decision public " and explain "
why it was taken
".
A new opportunity to promote this jurisdiction.
“
It is in contact that we learn a lot of things
», Rejoices Laurent Fabius, who also met students from the François-Mauriac high school in Bordeaux on Tuesday.
The next public hearing should then take place either in Rennes or in the Paris region.
