Widely adopted in the Senate, the text is intended to be a tribute to the two young girls murdered by a terrorist in the Marseille train station in 2017. Defending his project in the hemicycle, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, Philippe Tabarot, senator from the Alps -Maritimes, did not fail to remind the memory of the parliamentarians of the Upper House of this tragic event.
“
On October 1, 2017, on the square in front of the Saint Charles train station, Maurane, 20 years old, a medical student, and Laura, 21 years old, a nursing student, saw their lives taken away by a terrible Islamist knife attack.
This drama in Marseille was undoubtedly for me, a regional transport representative at the time, that of the awareness which brings me today with this bill to this platform,”
explained the parliamentarian in his introduction. , before noting a proliferation of similar tragedies that have occurred since the Marseille tragedy: Bayonne, Gare de Lyon, Stalingrad station, Nice, etc.
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A first “victory”
Given the broad support obtained in the Senate (227 votes in favor), notably by the Centrists, Philippe Tabarot is confident about the final adoption of the text in the Assembly, while Matignon accepted an accelerated procedure obliging the deputies to debate it in the over the next six weeks.
The objective, which seems shared by many, is to be able to count on a law at the beginning of spring and before the summer Olympic Games.
How effective would such a law be if adopted, particularly against knife attacks in transport?
For Philippe Tabarot, who calls for a text built on the daily realities experienced on the ground, the progress would be far from negligible in terms of prevention and security.
“
It’s a victory for transport safety
,” said the elected representative to Le
Figaro.
I realized the extent of the danger and the difficulties of our security forces on the ground.
We had to react and act with a text not only from the field but eagerly awaited by the transport base
.”
Palpations, seizures, blocks and penalties
In the future, transport agents (SUGE for the SNCF and GPSR for the RATP) could - thanks to the text - carry out preventive pat-downs and seize any dangerous object or potential weapons, without the obligatory presence of a judicial police officer. within the hour.
They will also be able to block people from station forecourts if their behavior seems dangerous.
Against harassers or perpetrators of physical violence, the bill also offers judges the possibility of pronouncing an additional penalty of banning entry to a station and penalizing “
habitual incivility
” (urine, damage, threats, etc.). .) which ruin the lives of users and which become crimes punishable by a fine of 3750 euros.
Additional means are also planned to facilitate the recovery of financial penalties, through the tax administration and the cross-checking of files.
Finally, Senator Philippe Tabarot pleads for the development of new technologies, such as the perpetuation of “pedestrian cameras” for agents and the use of video protection for judicial requisitions.
The right-wing parliamentarian regrets that the left is “
still in the culture of excuses
” in the face of this problem of insecurity in transport.
The situation having deteriorated significantly since the reference Savary law (2016), Philippe Tabarot believes that there cannot be success in transport as long as the French, and particularly women, have fears for their safety.
He also highlighted some worrying figures in his argument, based on a survey according to which 46% of French citizens and 50% of Parisians do not feel safe in transport.
In 2023, some 111,531 victims of theft and violence were recorded there, while more than 4,000 dangerous objects on railway rights-of-way (butcher's chopper, ice pick, knives, baseball bat, gas cylinder, etc.) were introduced there.
So many abuses to which deputies will soon be invited to react, by assessing the relevance and urgency of a text imagined in the Senate to make all French transport more frequentable and safer.