What will happen to the orientation and programming law of the Ministry of the Interior (Lopmi)? The text must mark the great work of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who intends to make it a tool for modernizing the police and gendarmerie services without equivalent since the vast reforms undertaken during the 1980s by Pierre Joxe, a distant predecessor and claimed model of the current tenant of Place Beauvau.
Ce “unprecedented reinforcement in the history of the Ministry of the Interior”as Mr. Darmanin wrote to the Synergie-Officiers union on January 11, provides for an increase of 10 billion euros in the ministerial budget, to which should be added an additional 1 billion euros per year for five years, to finance in particular the ramping up of the fight against cybercrime, modernized equipment and the creation of eleven new units of CRS and mobile gendarmes.
Mr. Darmanin initially planned to present this text in July or September, largely resulting from the conclusions of the cycle of Beauvau discussions on security carried out between February and July 2021, for a vote scheduled before the end of the year. But compliance with this timetable may well have been reaffirmed by the Minister during a meeting with the police unions on 31 May, but he now appears optimistic to say the least, given the results of the second round of the legislative elections: the political volatility of the new Assembly jeopardizes the adoption without firing a shot hoped for by the minister.
Pitfall of constitutional review
For Mr. Darmanin, subject to the need to see the law passed by a large majority, the main danger comes naturally from the left. With 72 elected, the “rebellious” will not even have to convince their environmentalist, communist and socialist allies to join them to reach the quorum of 60 deputies necessary to seize the Constitutional Council “if the text is proposed as is, without prior rewriting”predicts Ugo Bernalicis, the “Mr. Security” of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) and deputy for the North.
The pitfall of constitutional review is not an insignificant threat. In 2021, the members of the Constitutional Council had already challenged no less than seven provisions of the very controversial “global security” law, including the emblematic article 24, which provided for penalizing the “malicious” dissemination of images of members of the security forces. order. To avoid such a risk, the judicial component of the measures provided for by the Lopmi – i.e. half of the provisions, centered on the simplification of criminal procedure – could be revised downwards, according to the Ministry of the Interior, “so as not to interfere with the conclusions of the Estates General of Justice”, whose return, initially set for the end of April, was finally postponed.
You have 57.47% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.