After the controversy at the Guillotière de Lyon linked to the aggression of several policemen, Gérald Darmanin “assumes a form of double punishment” for foreign offenders this Tuesday night on BFMTV. In an interview in World in early July, the Minister of the Interior made similar statements. BFMTV.com explains what this device consists of.
The “double sentence” designates the fact that a foreigner, that is, a person who does not have French nationality, and who has committed a crime or an offense on French territory, can be expelled, once served, in accordance with the law of November 2, 1945.
A device modified in 1981
Among the crimes and misdemeanors that open up this possibility, we find in particular rape, murder, drug trafficking or counterfeiting or terrorism. The double sentence can be pronounced by the Minister of the Interior or the prefect through an expulsion order or by a court.
The double sentence was modified for the first time in 1981 by Gaston Defferre. Then a tenant of Place Beauvau, this close friend of François Mitterrand establishes eight categories of foreigners who can file a motion for dismissal in the event of a court conviction alleging their link to France. Among these, we find in particular foreigners married for at least 3 years to a person of French nationality or even people who have a child they are raising.
Sarkozy changes the law and facilitates the use of house arrest
However, the law change does not refer to convictions related to fundamental rights such as incitement to hatred or terrorism.
In 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, proposed a reform that extended protection against expulsion. The double sanction no longer applies to foreigners who arrived in France before the age of 13 or those who resided there for more than 20 years.
For the latter, judges can already apply house arrest. “The maneuver made it possible to sanction foreigners who we knew would be difficult to expel,” he later explains to Release a policeman.
Darmanin wants to “improve the device” of the double penalty
If the terms of application change, the double penalty is always used. In 2010, there were 3,750 bans from French territory out of 13,456 criminal convictions.
After the victory of François Hollande, the left postpones and does not reform the principle of double punishment. The issue came back to the table in 2019 when Marlène Schiappa, then secretary of state in charge of gender equality, proposed deporting foreigners convicted of sexual violence, without concrete action in the law.
Early July 2022 on The world then, on our antenna, Gérald Darmanin puts the issue back on the table, alleging “wanting to improve” the device of double punishment to remove the “brakes that prevent the French State from expelling foreign criminals.”
Significant legal obstacles
The Minister of the Interior can count on Marine Le Pen and her 89 deputies. She said that she wanted to say “a hundred times yes” to her proposal during her first question to the government on July 11, saying that she would “sign with both hands” and support this text.
Problem: This provision would require the circumvention of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, which would be equivalent to removing the existing exceptions. But for this it would be necessary to violate several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Every person has the right to respect for their private and family life, their home and their correspondence”, this text indicates, closing the door to the expulsion of a person who has a child in France, for example, or marital ties.
This new law must be presented at the beginning of the school year at the same time as the guidance and programming law of the Ministry of the Interior. This text should, in particular, relax the criteria that allow removal such as marriage “or the age of arrival in France”, as the minister explained on our antenna. However, certain nationalities would not be targeted like Syrians or Afghans, and Gérald Darmanin considered the geopolitical situation too bad.
Source: BFM TV
