Compulsory censored isolation: a measure "too prejudicial to individual liberty"

INTERVIEW

It's no. The Constitutional Council censured Thursday the compulsory ten-day isolation of Covid-19 patients, a measure enshrined in the law promulgating the extension of the health pass and the vaccination obligation for caregivers. If most of the text has been validated - the early termination of a fixed-term contract or temporary without health pass was also challenged -, the Wise Men considered that compulsory isolation constitutes "a deprivation of liberty" disproportionate in relation to the risk sanitary.

"This measure was too general and prejudicial to individual freedom", comments at the microphone of

the constitutionalist Anne-Charlène Bezzina, also lecturer in public law.

"The Constitutional Council has always had for detention measures, and in particular for measures restricting freedom such as this one, a particular concern for good proportionality", she points out.

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"The terms of the law were not precise enough"

According to her, the scope of this measure - which provided that solitary confinement could be broken between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., in an emergency or for strictly essential travel - was not clearly enough defined in the text. "The Constitutional Council said in particular that the terms of the law were not precise enough to say from when the solitary confinement starts. When can it be stopped? Does it also depend on the person's work, how it can move? "asks our guest.

If the executive is keen to keep this measure in its arsenal in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic, it will therefore have to provide the circumstances to make it constitutional. "The device may evolve depending on the circumstances and the way in which the legislator will, no doubt, resubmit a new law in the matter", further points out Anne-Charlène Bezzina.