This is a timely intervention. During his opening speech at the Night of Law, on Thursday, October 3, Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council, recalled some great principles that underpin liberal democracies and, first of all, return to the notion of“rule of law”.
This is good: this year’s theme is “democracy and law”. This allows, above all, to respond – remotely and always with the surgical style that characterizes Laurent Fabius – to the new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau. Coming from the most right wing of the Republicans (LR), the former senator from Vendée raised the possibility of a challenge to the rule of law. On September 29, he estimated sunday newspaper (JDD) that “The rule of law is neither intangible nor sacred.”
In response to the protest, he corrected his comments in a press release published on 1Ahem October : “Of course there can be no democracy without the rule of law, without public authorities respecting the law and freedoms. This is the basis of our Republic. » Michel Barnier, the Prime Minister, also had to make a clarification during his general policy statement on October 2: “The firmness of criminal policy is inseparable from respect for the rule of law and the principles of independence and impartiality of justice to which I am deeply, personally and definitively attached. » Insufficient clarification: on Thursday, 170 LR parliamentarians signed a column published by The Figaro in support of Mr. Retailleau and his conception of the rule of law expressed in the JDD.
“democratic unrest”
The President of the Constitutional Council recalls the importance of the rule of law. “Our democracies need authority, security and efficiency. In the face of attacks on these areas, it is important to concretely demonstrate that they can meet these requirements and do so while respecting the rule of law. The rule of law is the condition of democracy and should not be confused with the rule of law, which, of course, can be modified.the former socialist prime minister detailed before his guests, in particular former US Secretary of State John Kerry, Yulia Navalnaïa, widow of the Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, and Siofra O’Leary, former president of the European Court of Human Rights. . And to continue: “The critical observation of certain deficiencies in the realization of the democratic ideal should not call into question this very ideal, which, precisely, should make it possible to remedy these deficiencies. »
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