The device was well known to “yellow vests”. The police prefecture has multiplied, in recent days, orders prohibiting undeclared demonstrations in several sectors of the capital. From Tuesday March 21 to Tuesday March 28, prefectural orders were issued every day to prohibit demonstrators from spontaneously meeting in the late afternoon and evening in a large part of the city – Place de la Concorde, the avenue des Champs-Elysées, the Trocadéro, the Place de la République, the Place de la Bastille and the Place d’Italie. Offenders thus risk a fixed fine of 135 euros for participation in a prohibited event.
The Paris police chief, Laurent Nunez, justifies these decisions in view of the violence and arrests that have taken place since the announcement, on March 16, of the use of article 49.3 by the government to have Parliament adopt its reform. retirements. Invoking “gatherings presenting a risk of serious disturbance to public order”he ensures that the “area in which restrictions are implemented” intended to “guarantee the security of people and property, that of sensitive and symbolic sites and institutions”.
By signing these decrees, the prefect seems to support the Minister of the InteriorGérald Darmanin, who had asserted, wrongly, that“being in an undeclared demonstration is a crime, [qui] deserves an arraignment”. Indeed, if the assembly was not prohibited, “no other legal or regulatory provision criminalizes the mere fact of participating in an undeclared demonstration”has recalled the Court of Cassation in June 2022. The decrees issued by the prefect of police thus make it possible to circumvent this rule of law.
Information that is difficult to access
It is on this basis that several people were verbalized on the Place de la République Friday evening or near the Pompidou Center Saturday night, as reported by several journalists present on the spot. Problem: While no one is supposed to ignore the law, information about the ban on demonstrations was not easily accessible, if not accessible at all.
Strong police presence in République, several people are randomly checked and fined up to… https://t.co/YXkN2M60Vf
Friday evening, it was necessary to go to the site of the prefecture of Paris to find a trace of the decree prohibiting certain sectors, including the Place de la République. The document was uploaded more than half an hour after the ban began at 5:30 p.m., the document’s creation data shows. A few days later, Tuesday March 28, it was necessary to look for the site of the Paris police headquartersdistinct from the previous one, to find out about a new ban.
As for the decree prohibiting undeclared gatherings for Saturday evening, it has not even been posted online. The document was simply displayed in front of the Paris police headquarters, as seen by lawyer David van der Vlist, member of the Union of Lawyers of France (SAF, ranked on the left). To find out about the ban, the demonstrators should therefore have gone beforehand to rue de Lutèce, in the 4e arrondissement.
Several organizations, lawyers and elected officials were moved by the difficulty for the citizen to have access to this information, in the midst of a movement of protest against the pension reform. “Imagine the absurdity of the situation: young people are punished by telling them “you have no right to gather in such and such a place” without their being able to know beforehand that they had no right to do so”has for example deplored, Sunday, the deputy Nupes of Essonne Antoine Léaument.
A decree “on the sly” to discourage demonstrations
While the decrees in question specify that their entry into force is “as soon as it is displayed at the gates of the police headquarters”the lawyer Vincent Brengarth is also surprised by the absurdity of the situation: “Who is going to go to the prefecture to see the public display of the decree? Even being an informed citizen, we don’t do that…”
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“How many websites and billboards are protesters supposed to monitor to find out when they are allowed to go out? »asks the SAF, which accuses the prefect of publishing ” in catimini “ these orders, with the aim that demonstrators stay at home for fear of being fined.
Why are decrees published at the last moment? Why aren’t they all posted in the same place? Why not have communicated on social networks, which could have allowed as many people as possible to have access to the sectors concerned by the ban on spontaneous assembly? Contacted by The world, the prefecture of police did not respond on these points, although it had already had recourse to Twitter in similar situations in the past. The Prefecture of Police confines itself to saying that it complies with article L221-2 of the code of relations between the public and the administration which provides that “the entry into force of a regulatory act is subject to the completion of mandatory publicity formalities, in particular by means of publication or display, unless otherwise provided”.
A barrier to legal action
Me Brengarth believes that this absence of clear and systematic communication is intended “to cause difficulty of access for the litigant who would like to challenge the interim release order before the administrative court”.
This emergency procedure makes it possible to challenge an administrative decision that would seriously and manifestly illegally infringe a fundamental freedom. The judge then has forty-eight hours to make a decision. For the SAF, the Paris police headquarters “Organizes a state of lawlessness”. “If no one sees the text, no appeal and if the judge seized late does not have time to rule, no suspensionnotes the union. However, the judge must in theory control the necessity and the proportionality of these decrees, clearly debatable. »
On Monday March 27, at 6.41 p.m., the SAF, the Syndicat de la magistrature (SM), the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH) and the trade union Solidaires filed together a summary freedom procedure with the Paris administrative court. targeting the decree taken for the night of Monday to Tuesday, not displayed in the prefecture and published online in the collection of administrative acts at 5:30 p.m., thirty minutes after the start of the ban. Tuesday at the end of the day, the administrative court rejected their request, judging to have been seized too late to convene a hearing. The court further notes that when it issues its order, the decree is no longer valid and that it “there is no need to rule on it”.
“The strategy of the police headquarters will have produced its effects”immediately reacted the SAF, once again asking the authorities to publish the decrees “within a time limit allowing for effective judicial review”.
Me van der Vlist assures that his union is ready to seize the administrative court again for the next orders, so that the necessity and the proportionality of these orders can be really questioned. “We never saw that, even during the movement of the “yellow vests” the decrees were published the day before, it was not done in secret, and the perimeters of prohibition were not as wide”, he recalls. With the LDH, the SAF announced that it would help all demonstrators who had been fined to contest their fines before the police court. “There will then be a real debate on the time of publication and on the methods of publicity of these decrees which are not adequate”says the lawyer.
As of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, before the publication of this article, no new order banning undeclared demonstrations had yet been posted online.