Paris (AFP)
Four months after the National Assembly, the Senate dominated by the right-wing opposition begins Tuesday for a week the examination in first reading of the bill LREM on "global security", with the will to leave its mark on this controversial text.
Set to music by the Ministry of the Interior, this bill from deputies Jean-Michel Fauvergue and Alice Thourot still meets strong opposition from associations for the defense of freedoms and the left.
The Stop Global Security Law coordination called for resuming mobilization "to defeat this text and the liberticidal logic that accompanies it", announcing gatherings Tuesday in front of the Luxembourg Palace and the prefectures or sub-prefectures in the regions.
In the hemicycle, the left promises to be very offensive on "all articles infringing on freedom".
The Communist-majority CRCE group will defend from the outset a motion aimed at rejecting the text as a whole.
Where the government defends a "security continuum", the socialist Jérôme Durain sees "at best a police continuum at the cost of dangerous shifts".
Some 350 amendments were tabled in session, including twenty from the government which will attempt to reverse changes made by senators in committee.
The Law Commission has "deeply framed" the text, affirmed its president LR François-Noël Buffet, "so that the + safety continuum" on which the senatorial majority is "in agreement" can guarantee "both a efficiency for our police and security services and at the same time protection of freedoms ".
"The Senate will have to find its mark on this text", supports the centrist co-rapporteur Loïc Hervé, for whom "it is in the light of public freedoms" that it has been rewritten.
But the rewrite is not to the liking of the police unions.
- "Provocation to identification" -
"On certain points, the text has been emptied of its meaning", regretted Linda Kebbab, national delegate of the SGP-FO Unity Union.
It points in particular to the rewriting of articles 23 (on remission of sentences) and 24, which responded to a request from the police unions.
In the version voted by the deputies, article 24 amended the 1881 law on freedom of the press to suppress the "malicious" dissemination of images of the police.
He had aroused an outcry from journalists.
The senators chose in committee to propose "a new article which goes beyond the sterile opposition" between freedom of the press and protection of the police, by creating in the penal code a new offense of "provocation to the identification" .
Thus reformulated, article 24 "in no way hinders freedom of the press", assured LR co-rapporteur Marc-Philippe Daubresse.
The text resulting from the Assembly provided for the end of credits for remission of sentences for offenses against the police, firefighters or elected officials.
The senators in committee limited the device to the most serious offenses (murders, violence resulting in permanent mutilation, etc.).
Regarding the pedestrian cameras used by the police, the senators opposed in committee the dissemination of images directly in the media or on social networks.
They have also tightened the legal framework for the use of drones: use limited to serious offenses, places difficult to access, etc., prohibition of sound recording and facial recognition, "flexible" prior authorization regime.
The National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms (Cnil) had deplored that it was not "sufficiently protective of the rights of persons".
The senators have again reviewed the device providing, on an experimental basis, an extension of the prerogatives of municipal police officers.
In particular, they extended the experiment from 3 to 5 years, and eliminated the possibility for these agents to carry out seizures or to note offenses of consumption of narcotics.
On the other hand, they voted without modifications the provision providing for authorizing access to establishments open to the public (museums, theaters, etc.) to armed police and gendarmes outside their working hours.
This measure is debated: the centrist president of the Senate Culture Committee Laurent Lafon intends in particular to oppose it.
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