Laurent Fabius, President of the Constitutional Council, in 2019. -

BREGAND CELINE / SIPA

The Constitutional Council validated this Friday the extension of the state of health emergency until February 16.

This measure, approved a week ago by Parliament, had given rise to tense debates between the majority and the oppositions.

"The Constitutional Council ruled that the legislator was able, without disregarding any constitutional requirement, to extend the state of health emergency until February 16, 2021", he said in a press release, not censoring this measure as he had done it, for example, for the Avia law against online hate.

About sixty deputies, but also about sixty senators, had presented appeals against Article 1 and several provisions of the law.

A measure "justified" by the severity of the epidemic

The Council considered "that there was no need to call into question the legislator's assessment that, on the one hand, the Covid-19 epidemic is spreading at a high speed contributing (...) to a state of health disaster endangering, by its nature and severity, the health of the population and according to which, on the other hand, this state should last at least during the four months to come ”.

The elected officials who approached the Council considered that the extension until February 16 was "manifestly disproportionate in that it undeniably undermines the fundamental freedoms constitutionally guaranteed without constituting an adequate response likely to end the epidemic" .

Political tensions

Far from the political consensus of last spring during the first confinement, the extension of the state of health emergency sharpened to the end the tensions and divisions between the majority and the oppositions.

The sacred union of the political class, which had prevailed during the first epidemic wave, was shattered, while the hiccups did not spare a disorganized majority which, at the Palais Bourbon, was sometimes found in the minority.

In addition to the heart of the Avia bill on online hatred, the Sages had also censured a few weeks ago the bill on "security measures" for terrorists leaving prison.

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  • Emergency state

  • Covid 19

  • Constitutional Council

  • Coronavirus

  • Health