In a decision rendered on Thursday, the court partially censored two articles on the pseudonym investigation and investigative assistants, and censored two others as legislative rider. The main measures such as the generalization of delicual flat -rate fines or the “increased” police equipment are not affected.
by Abel Mestre
Most of the orientation and programming law of the Ministry of the Interior (LOPMI), better known as “Security law”, was validated by the Constitutional Council. In a decision rendered Thursday, January 19, the jurisdiction, however, partially censored two articles – one concerning the pseudonym investigation, the other on investigative assistants – and censored two others, as legislative riders, i.e. Amendments unrelated to the text examined.
The text carried by Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, who provides for an additional 15 billion euros over five years for the police and the gendarmes, had found in the fall, an opposition resolved among the parliamentarians on the left. These are “rebellious” deputies, communists and environmentalists who seized the Constitutional Council on eighteen articles of the law, two thirds of the text.
Despite this wide referral, the main measures of the law are not affected. This is the case with the generalization of delicual lump sum fines, which allow crimes to sanction without legal proceedings; “Police” equipment; the creation of 200 gendarmerie brigades, eleven additional units of mobile forces or even the increase in survey capacities in digital matters.
- The case of the pseudonym survey
Article 230-46 of the Criminal Code of Criminal Procedure allows officers or judicial police officers acting during the investigation or on commission rogatory to proceed under pseudonym (by being an “infiltrated”) to certain acts of investigation. Article 10 of the LOPMI provided that the authorization of the public prosecutor or the investigating judge was no longer required for “the acquisition of any content, product, substance, levy or service as well as for the transmission of any content when the object of acquisition or transmission is lawful “.
To decide on the constitutionality of this provision, the Council was mainly based on article 16 of the Declaration of Human and Citizen of 1789 guaranteeing the right to a fair trial. He thus judges that “having regard to the particular nature and the conditions for carrying out these acts of survey [sale or purchase of products or services, physically or on the Internet], by providing the acquisitions or transmissions of content from the Authorization of the public prosecutor or the investigating judge in the event that their object is lawful, [these] provisions of article 10 deprive legal guarantees the right to a fair trial “. Thus, the authorization of the prosecutor or the investigating judge will always remain essential.
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