Could we have misunderstood Bruno Retailleau? Two days after his controversial remarks in the JDD, this is what the Minister of the Interior wants to know. As a reminder, the new tenant of Beauvau had considered that the “rule of law” was neither “intangible” nor “sacred”. “It is a set of rules, a hierarchy of norms, judicial control, a separation of powers, but the source of the rule of law is democracy, it is the sovereign people,” he said. added.
“Of course there cannot be democracy without the rule of law”
After a day of controversies, outraged reactions from the left and part of the macronie, who see in this declaration the slide of the Republic towards an illiberal democracy, the minister had to rectify the situation. In a press release, Bruno Retailleau believes that “the subject of the protection and security of the French is too serious and too serious to be exploited by false debates […] We must face reality, we owe it to the French as Michel Barnier reminded us: today, the law does not sufficiently protect the French” he explains, insisting: “Of course it cannot There can be democracy without the rule of law.
“It is for his firmness that Bruno Retailleau was appointed”
At the meeting of the LR group of the Senate this Tuesday, the senators were, more than ever, in support of their former president. “He was not talking about the state of the law but the state of the law. And the law must evolve when it is an obstacle to controlling immigration. In the first round of the legislative elections, the French showed that they no longer wanted a lax policy on the sovereign. It is for his firmness that Bruno Retailleau was appointed,” analyzes the senator from Paris, Agnès Evren.
“Who can think that Bruno Retailleau is against the rule of law? », Also corrects the criminal lawyer and senator from Paris, Francis Szpiner. “There are interpretations of the law, and on this point things are not intangible. The law is something that evolves all the time. When I was a young law student. My teacher said: the Parliament of England can do anything except change a man into a woman. This is no longer true today,” he compares.
As a legislator, Bruno Retailleau particularly attacked the broad censorship of the immigration law by the Constitutional Council, which he described as a “denial of the power of Parliament”. “The decision of the Constitutional Council on the immigration law is a shocking decision […] It proceeds with an argument from authority (on the interpretation of legislative riders) which is absolutely unmotivated. That poses a problem. And every jurisdiction is exposed to criticism,” considers Francis Szpiner.
Laurent Somon, vice-president of the LR group, questions the conditions of the interview given by Bruno Retailleau to JDD. “A quick interview where we are more interested in the little sentences than in the substance”
At the end of the council of ministers, government spokesperson Maud Bergeon indicated that Michel Barnier “had recalled his intangible attachment to the rule of law and that it was unthinkable to call it into question”.
