Paris (AFP)

The majority Senate on the right adopted Tuesday a show of hands, at first reading, a proposed law LR to better regulate the "rave parties" and strengthen the sanctions against organizers who are not in legality.

The text, however, seems unlikely to flourish in the National Assembly, dominated by the presidential majority, Interior Secretary Laurent Nuñez having expressed "the greatest reserves" of the government.

"The objective is not to prohibit the + rave parties + or to designate culprits (...) but to find concerted solutions," said the author of the bill, Pascale Bories (LR), pointing out the "helplessness of the mayors concerned".

According to rapporteur Henri Leroy (LR), some 3,200 gatherings of this type, also known as + free parties + or free parties, are held each year. Mr. Nuñez mentioned 2,500 events a year.

These festive and musical gatherings, which are held mostly in rural areas, are frequently associated, observe the author and the protractor of the text, with noise nuisances, degradations of private grounds or natural spaces, or the risks of overflows or endangering participants.

"The supervisory system put in place in 2002 does not work," the rapporteur said.

It is based on a declaration system at the prefecture from a threshold of 500 participants. However, "more than 80%" of free parties have fewer than 500 participants, according to the rapporteur.

The text provides that within 500 expected participants, gatherings must be declared to the mayors.

As regards the sanctions applicable to organizers who do not make a prior declaration or disregard a prohibition, the text proposes to transform the current offense into an offense punishable by a fine of 3,750 euros and a penalty of general interest. Confiscation of sound equipment is also possible.

The text also provides for the development of a "charter" of the organizers.

Laurent Nuñez judged "difficult to support" the planned measures, which he feared "significant adverse effects".

However, he pledged to be "attentive" to the fact that the prefects provide information to the mayors concerned.

The left judged the text useless. For Jerome Durain (PS), it can even be "counterproductive", while the president of the communist-majority group CRCE, Eliane Assassi, considered that it is "symptomatic of a drift which leads to legislating the slightest miscellaneous ".

The association Freeform, a national structure that accompanies the organization of festive gatherings, denounced in a statement a text "which is a serious violation of freedom of assembly" and "forbidden to meet to party and listen to music at home without asking the right to your mayor.

She called for "to be rejected during her visit to the assembly" a text that she considers "highly wobbly and unenforceable".

© 2019 AFP