The Paris police headquarters will no longer be able to issue orders prohibiting certain gatherings in complete discretion and at the last moment. Seized in particular by the Association for the Defense of Constitutional Freedoms (Adélico) and the League of Human Rights (LDH), the judge in chambers of the administrative court of Paris ordered, on Tuesday 4 April, the prefect of police to publish them before they come into force and on the website of the prefecture, so that they can be challenged and, if necessary, suspended by the courts in the event of infringement of freedoms, as the law allows.
In the midst of popular protest against the pension reform, the Paris prefecture has had recourse almost daily since March 21 to decrees prohibiting undeclared demonstrations (authorized otherwise) in many sectors of the capital, in order to avoid, according to she, the nocturnal outbursts. Offenders risk a fixed fine of 135 euros for participation in a prohibited event. Between March 17 and 27, 500 verbalizations were drawn up to this effect, according to the prefecture.
The LDH, the Syndicate of Lawyers of France (SAF) and the Syndicate of the Judiciary (SM) had been accusing the Paris Prefect of Police for more than a week of publishing ” in catimini “ these orders so that demonstrators stay at home for fear of being fined. While no one is supposed to be ignorant of the law, information about the ban on demonstrations was not easily accessible, if not accessible at all.
Orders published after the time of the rallies
Orders were very often taken at the last moment, sometimes published after the effective time of the ban provided for in the document, and not systematically posted online. The SAF had thus demonstrated that the prohibition of certain sectors to demonstrators on Friday March 24 had been put online on the website of the Prefecture of Paris more than half an hour after the start of the ban. Same on March 27. On other days, the decrees were published on the website of the Paris Police Prefecture, separate from the previous one. As for the decree of March 25, prohibiting nocturnal demonstrations, it had only been posted on the doors of the Paris police headquarters. To find out about it, the demonstrators should therefore have gone to rue de Lutèce, in the 4e arrondissement.
Tuesday, the judge in chambers noted that this late publication and the lack of adequate publicity imposed by article L. 221-2 of the code of relations between the public and the administration were doing “barrier to the exercise of the summary freedom” et “carried a serious and manifestly unlawful interference with the right to exercise an effective remedy” : these processes did not leave enough time for the litigant to be able to challenge these orders urgently before the administrative court, given in particular their limited duration.
“This decision clarifies things”
“It’s very unfortunate that it took a referral to get to this point, comments Paul Cassia, professor of law at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, co-author of the request before the court, joined by The world. But this decision clarifies things: no prefecture will be able to ban gatherings at the last moment. »
In their request, the Adélico and the LDH also demanded the publication by the police headquarters on Twitter of the sectors where demonstrations were prohibited, as well as a display on the Parisian public roads concerned. These requests were not imposed by the judge in chambers.
As a general rule, the law does not prohibit taking part in an undeclared demonstration. But these decrees made it possible to circumvent this rule of law. The Paris police chief, Laurent Nunez, justified these decisions in view of the violence and arrests that have taken place since March 16, after the use of article 49.3 to have the pension reform adopted. Invoking “gatherings presenting a risk of serious disturbance to public order”he assured that the “area in which restrictions are implemented” aimed at “guarantee the security of people and property, that of sensitive and symbolic sites and institutions”.
The legal battle launched by several of the organizations defending the rights of demonstrators seems to be bearing fruit. Saturday evening, the Paris administrative court seized in summary proceedings had suspended the decree of the prefect of police, published the day before, prohibiting gatherings in several sectors of the capital from Saturday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 3 a.m. The judge considered that this decree “obviously unlawfully interferes with the freedom to demonstrate” with prohibition measures that do not appear “neither necessary nor proportionate to the preservation of public order”.