The National Assembly largely approved, Tuesday, November 22, the bill of programming and orientation of the Ministry of the Interior, which provides for an additional 15 billion euros over five years.
The text was adopted with the help of the deputies of the Republicans (LR) and the National Rally (RN), despite the opposition of a large part of the left (419 votes against 116, and 35 abstentions). The elected communists, ecologists, and La France insoumise (LFI) unanimously voted against, while the socialists abstained.
After the vote, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, welcomed a text “historical” giving to “police, gendarmes, firefighters and prefecture agents” of the “means to protect the French”. The bill had already been comfortably passed in the Senate (307 votes for, 27 against). Deputies and senators will now try to agree on a common version of the text in a joint committee.
“We welcome the increase in appropriations and the recruitment of 8,500 positions in the police forces” on the five-year term, declared before the solemn vote the deputy Ian Boucard (LR), repeating however that his group considered the bill as ” insufficient “. Right-wing elected officials have almost doubled, to 3,000, places in administrative detention centers for foreigners in an irregular situation.
“It is not enough to inject money”launched Jordan Guitton (RN), who felt that the text represented more “the communication ambition of a minister”even if his group would vote for “support law enforcement”.
The left denounces “old recipes”
The “rebellious” deputies, communists and ecologists, on the other hand, criticized a vision contrary to the “local policing” that they defend. Also in their sights is the extension of the number of offenses which may be subject to a fixed tort fine, imposed by an agent outside of a trial, for example for obstructing road traffic.
“It is always the same old recipes from Nicolas Sarkozy that you have chosen to “pimp” (…) : the quantity, the figure to the detriment of the time of the surveys »launched the minister the ecologist Sandra Regol.
Davy Rimane (Communist group) castigated a text by “automatic justice, without human contact, which relegates empathy to the waste of time”when the “rebellious” MP Elisa Martin tackled the reform of the judicial police, which is not recorded by this bill, but addressed in a roadmap annexed to the text. “This means a real risk of loss of independence since it will act under the authority of the prefect. (…) [Cette réforme] may jeopardize investigations”she warned.
Cybercrime and online complaint
“It would be stupid not to recognize the progress contained in this text, and in particular the budgetary effort made”argued for his part the socialist Roger Vicot, recalling however an alert from the Council of State on the “non-budgetary security in the years to come”. Less hostile than the other deputies of the Nupes, the parliamentarian nevertheless denounced “the broadening of fixed criminal fines to intrusions into educational establishments and blockages of traffic lanes, [qui] poses a real democratic question with regard to the right to demonstrate”.
Defending a « abstention offensive », he, like the other deputies on the left, denounced the forthcoming reform of the judicial police as well as a lack of measures in the text in favor of the police-population link. With the increase in credits, eleven new units of mobile forces “specialized in rapid intervention” will be created; and, to ensure security in rural areas, two hundred gendarmerie brigades.
To fight cybercrime, which is constantly increasing, the text will allow the seizure of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. The bill also opens the possibility for certain offenses to file a complaint by videoconference, and toughens the repression of sexist and sexual insults. It also presents a ministry roadmap (on digital, training, the place of Frontex in national border control, etc.), without legislative value.