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France begins consultation on increasing public confidence in police

The French government begins a public consultation exercise on Monday aimed at devising ways to increase public confidence in the police that has been eroded by repeated scandals over racism and brutality.

France begins consultation on increasing public confidence in police
Illustration photo: AFP

The initiative was proposed by President Emmanuel Macron in December in order to diffuse criticism of French security forces which are regularly accused of discrimination and using excessive force.

In November, video of Paris police beating and abusing a black music producer inside his studio shocked the country, but other recent incidents include the violent clearing of a migrant camp in the centre of the capital.

During months of anti-government demonstrations by so-called “yellow vest” protesters in 2018-19, around 20 people lost an eye and dozens were seriously injured by police rubber bullets and stun grenades.

“We need to act urgently,” Macron wrote on December 8th when announcing the consultation to “consolidate” the link between the police and the French population, which is expected to last until May.

“I want to advance quickly and concretely to improve the working conditions for the noble and essential job of keeping the peace,” he added. “France hangs together through its police and gendarmes.”

Pitching the idea as both a listening exercise and a way of improving working conditions for officers is a sign of the delicate balancing act faced by the head of state.

Despite wide-ranging demands for better community relations, Macron is aware that officers are on the frontlines of often violent streets protests, as well as anti-terror operations.

He angered police unions when he acknowledged in December that identity checks carried out by security forces targeted ethnic minorities disproportionately – a common complaint from residents in high-immigration areas.

“When you have a skin colour that is not white, you are stopped much more. You are identified as a problem factor. And that cannot be justified,” he told the Brut video website.

Yves Lefebvre, a trade union leader, wrote to him afterwards to complain, saying that the fault lay in “decades of urbanisation policies that have piled up immigrant populations in the same areas”.

The consultations will see police union leaders, former officers and local mayors invited to give their opinions in a process overseen by hardline Interior Minister Gérald Darminin.

Darmanin is also set to tour the country to meet local officers, but it remains unclear how much civil society groups and academics will be asked to contribute.

The conclusions are set to inform a new draft security law which will be brought before parliament before France holds a presidential election in the first half of 2022.

A previous draft sparked protests in November and December over a clause that would have criminalised publishing images identifying on-duty officers.

Long-standing proposals for improving confidence in French security forces include more local policing focused on problem-solving, rather than simply repression, and a truly independent police complaints process.

Critics have dismissed the latest consultations as a PR exercise.

Interior Minister Darmanin made his views on police brutality clear in July last year in the wake of the killing in the United States of George Floyd, a black man who choked to death while being arrested.

“When I hear the words police violence, personally it makes me choke,” Darmanin told a parliamentary hearing.

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POLITICS

French govt faces new no-confidence vote over pensions row

France's government will face a no-confidence vote next week after a latest attempt to repeal an unpopular increase in the retirement age prompted left-wing opponents to announce the motion on Thursday.

French govt faces new no-confidence vote over pensions row

The pensions overhaul, a flagship measure of President Emmanuel Macron’s second and final term, lifted the retirement age to 64 from 62, sparking the country’s biggest protests in a generation.

The government has already survived multiple no-confidence votes over the pensions overhaul, even though Macron’s centrist party lost its overall majority in the lower-house National Assembly shortly after his re-election last year.

Facing the reform’s potential defeat in the Assembly, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had invoked in March a controversial constitutional mechanism that passed the law without a vote.

Parliament’s speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Wednesday said she would block on constitutional grounds a move by a small independent faction aimed at repealing the reform with new legislation, prompting the latest attempt to oust the government.

Mathilde Panot, a leading figure in the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI)  party, told reporters that the leftist NUPES alliance submitted a no-confidence vote due to be examined early next week after the “anti-democratic” move.

The LIOT group that tabled the latest challenge to the pensions overhaul withdrew its text on Thursday, after the key article on repealing the retirement age rise was removed.

Panot said “discussions were still ongoing” with LIOT, which had not yet decided whether it would back the initiative.

The no-confidence motion appears to have scant chance of success because the right-wing Les Républicains party is unlikely to back it.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party is also considering tabling a no-confidence motion.

“When a government allows itself to attack the workings of democracy to this extent, it deserves censure,” said its leader Marine Le Pen.

Panot said the NUPES coalition would “never abandon the fight” against the higher retirement age and would continue working towards its common goal of lowering the age to 60.

Thursday’s stormy parliamentary debate on the pension reform was interrupted when news broke of a mass stabbing attack in the Alpine town of Annecy, with MPs holding a minute’s silence in honour of the victims.
 

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