Darmanin wants to draw inspiration from stadium bans on protesters, and it’s controversial

POLICE – While he has just provoked the anger of Italy and a diplomatic quarrel with a new exit on immigration, the Minister of the Interior is still talking about him. At the microphone of big mouths from RMC, Gérald Darmanin spoke of his wish to draw inspiration from the security policy put in place around football matches to legislate on demonstrations and thugs.

” We must come back to the work with the anti-breakers law proposed at the time by Mr. Retailleau”, explained the Minister of the Interior this Thursday, May 4, in reference to a 2019 bill from the current head of senators LR, at the time challenged by the Constitutional Council. ” The idea is to apply to demonstrations what we apply to football matches. When you have hooligans whose idea is not to come and support a match but to break up people, break up public property, today we are banned from the stadium, sometimes for life”.

A declaration which follows the violence observed during the day of demonstration of May 1, where 406 police officers and gendarmes were injured in France, including 305 in Paris alone.

But a first problem quickly made football supporters wince, often in the sights of restrictive measures, which are in particular applied during the travel of supporters. Indeed, the minister indicates that administrative stadium bans (IAS) for life exist to get rid of violent supporters in the stands. On Twitter, Cyril Dubois, lawyer at the Paris bar therefore took up the minister on this statement, false according to him. ” So no, lifetime bans don’t exist…”.

Also on social networks, many supporters and the National Association of Supporters (ANS) also castigated the minister’s remarks. ” You demonstrate, Mr. Minister, that you know nothing about the subject by evoking lifetime stadium bans ”denounced the ANS

Vous démontrez, Monsieur le ministre, ne rien connaître au sujet en évoquant des interdictions de stade à vie.
Ca n'existe évidemment pas.
Ce serait contraire à la Constitution.
Vous évoquez un sujet sans en maîtriser les données élémentaires.

— Asso.Nat.Supporters (@A_N_Supporters) May 4, 2023

And it is clear that they are right. On its website, the Ministry of the Interior (directed by Gérald Darmanin) also indicates that “ the administrative stadium ban can last a maximum of 2 years. If you have already been banned from the stadium in the previous 3 years, the new measure can last up to 3 years “. But not the slightest trace of a lifetime ban.

Risky administrative stadium bans

The HuffPost evoked as early as 2019, during the Yellow Vests crisis, how the measures taken against football supporters had been adapted to the demonstrations. The same pattern now seems to apply to the protest against the pension reform.

And this with great blows of prefectural decrees, generally published at the last minute to avoid (as with the supporters) groups of opponents of government reform equipped with saucepans, as has been the case on several occasions in recent weeks.

Except that if we confine ourselves to the example of the supporters, ” the use, effectiveness and excesses of administrative stadium bans “Are already sufficiently problematic from the point of view of individual freedoms not to apply them to demonstrators, underlines this Thursday Richard Bouigue, first deputy mayor of the 12th arrondissement of Paris.

The ANS, very attentive to these questions, also reacted on this subject. ” You do anything for football matches. The administrative judge atomizes you week after week. Maybe if you export to other categories of citizens what the supporters are going through, it will wake up the rest of the country”.

Here, the association refers to the court decisions which break week after week the prefectural decrees deemed inconsistent or disproportionate against the supporters. The ANS also cites a 2020 parliamentary report to demonstrate the absurdity of most of these IAS, initially designed to combat hooligan violence in stadiums. ” The rate of cancellation by the administrative judge of IAS decrees is high, around 75% “says this report.

” A very French concept »

A habit that is not new in France, where the IAS, created in 2006, therefore served as the basis for drafting the anti-breakers law, largely censored by the Constitutional Council in 2019. The very one that Gérald Darmanin now wants to rework For “ prohibit individuals, whom the intelligence services know to be violent, from going to demonstrations “.

A situation already denounced for a long time by Pierre Barthélemy. This lawyer specializing in the issue of supporters and fundamental freedoms also testified to his fight at the microphone of the podcast Without control of West France, a few weeks ago. ” What has been implemented in the context of football has not moved anyone because in people’s minds it is only football, it is not noble and it concerns people who are not necessarily very intelligent. begins by explaining Pierre Barthélemy.

And to take the example of associations for the defense of fundamental freedoms which did not realize in 2019 that the measures taken against football enthusiasts risked eventually being integrated into common law, and therefore threatening the whole of society. population. ” They told us: ‘We must not confuse everything, we are fighting for the freedom to demonstrate. And the freedom to go to a football match is still a hobby, so you’re bothering us a bit…’. “A very French conception “Consisting of singling out the case of the supporters who remain” incomprehensible from a legal and human point of view », for the lawyer.

Proof of this is today, since Gérald Darmanin now assumes that he wants to employ for the demonstrators and the ” thugs » the methods used against supporters. On social networks, the minister’s statements, although likely to scandalize the supporters, also push them to rejoice in this situation which should shed a little more light on their weekly struggle for what is qualified as simple ” leisure “. And perhaps arouse, finally, the concern of the defenders of freedoms in the broad sense.

What to refer to the statements made by James Rophé, spokesperson for the National Association of Supporters in 2019 on Konbini, where he already denounced the front line role of football supporters: “ The supporters are the guinea pigs of the draconian measures. »

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