“The French Republic was built with, and not against, the intermediary bodies”

Lhe Allarde law of March 1791 and the Le Chapelier law of June 1791 respectively prohibited corporations and professional groups. The idea was to establish a direct link between the authority of the State and the citizen, which went hand in hand with a certain verticality of power freed from the interference of any intermediary body. With these two laws were particularly targeted at the time the old dominant orders, that is to say the nobility and the clergy.

The imperial power of Napoleon I^is, the monarchical power of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-Philippe in no way questioned this principle, which protected them against any form of opposition in the country. In 1810, article 291 of the penal code tolerated more than it authorized the constitution of associations. If the July Monarchy, in 1834, transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the prefects the power to authorize associations, it toughened the sanctions against possible offenders.

It’s the II^e Republic which was the first to proclaim freedom of association, by article 8, chapter II of the Constitution of November 4, 1848: “Citizens have the right to associate, to assemble peacefully and without arms, to petition, to manifest their thoughts through the press and otherwise. The exercise of these rights is only limited by the rights or freedom of others and public safety. (…) »

The decisive contribution of III^e Republic

From then on, when the intermediate bodies were questioned, they were by non-republican regimes. As soon as he came to power as emperor, Napoleon III, by the decree of March 25, 1852, repealed the associative legislation of the II^e Republic and returns to the very restrictive one of the July Monarchy.

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In the 1860s, the Second Empire successively authorized the « coalition » (1864), then the ” meeting “ (1868), but never the« association »as a structured group of people who have chosen to join voluntarily, having given themselves their own goal and to do so, statutes.

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This is III^e Republic which permanently proclaims the freedom of association by the law of 1^is July 1901, “without authorization or prior declaration”, after proclaiming freedom of association in 1884, and next to compulsory, free and secular schooling (1881-1882).

The Vichy regime, through the Labor Charter (October 1941), dissolved the trade union confederations, including the CGT and the CFTC, and prohibited any interprofessional representation as could be the departmental unions.

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