Bruno Retailleau returns to his controversial remarks before Michel Barnier’s speech

POLICY – Backpedaling without appearing to be backpedaling. This is the complex exercise undertaken by the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, in a press release that looks like an explanation of a text released this Tuesday, October 1, ahead of the general policy declaration that Michel Barnier will deliver before the Assembly. While his comments calling into question the rule of law provoked a controversy, causing the government to jump to the chief magistrate of France, the minister is trying to limit the fire.

« 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 », Estimates Bruno Retailleau, seeming to confuse the rule of law (legal concept) and the state of law (corpus of texts in force).

« Of course there cannot be democracy without the rule of law, without public authorities respecting law and freedoms. This is the foundation of our Republic. When the texts in force no longer guarantee all rights – starting with the first of them, the right to be protected – they must evolve, in full respect of the institutions of our Republic “, continues the Minister of the Interior, while Michel Barnier’s entourage seemed to dissociate themselves from these declarations, informing Politico that the Minister of the Interior had expressed a “ personal position ».

Bruno Retailleau speaks “like a spokesperson for the RN”

In his interview with JDD which earned him to be qualified as spokesperson for the RN by the deputy Laure Lavalette, the former senator affirmed that “ the rule of law is not intangible or sacred.”

A break with what is commonly accepted in the republican field, which also caused many jurists to react. “ This questioning of the rule of law in the substantial sense, in the name of a certain conception of democracy, of the sovereign people who decide, is a point of tension of the moment », denounced to AFP Nicolas Hervieu, teacher specializing in public freedoms and European human rights law, drawing a parallel with Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

« The system that we have built in Europe, and France is part of it, is a system marked by the rule of law, that is to say the fact of respecting a set of procedures and protecting the fundamental rights which cannot be upset by only majority choice “, he continued. The Vie Publique institutional website lists the three “pillars” that characterize our rule of law: “ respect for the hierarchy of standards », « equality of citizens before the law » et « the establishment of the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers”. A base that Bruno Retailleau considered neither “ intangible ” is ” sacred » Sunday October 29.

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