The executive no longer rules out the option of declaring a state of emergency in the country, if the situation continues to flare up in many cities. Three days after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager killed by a policeman, in Nanterre, “all hypotheses” are considered for “the return of republican order”, said Elisabeth Borne on Friday June 30. At the end of a meeting of the interministerial crisis unit, at the beginning of the afternoon on Place Beauvau, Emmanuel Macron hardened his tone and announced “additional means” – in particular the deployment of armored vehicles from the gendarmerie, specified Matignon.
If the executive decides to put in place a state of emergency in the coming days, this would mean that, in its eyes, the common law tools no longer make it possible to manage a situation that has become explosive. This is the conclusion reached by the highest level of the State during the riots of 2005. The then President Jacques Chirac and his Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy then declared a state of emergency, a first in mainland France since the Algerian war.
Movement restrictions and requisitions
What does this extremely rare procedure allow? It authorizes the administrative authorities to take exceptional measures, and thus makes possible “the ban on the movement of people” and the establishment of “protection or security zones” where the stay of people is regulated, according to the law of 1955. In the context of the state of emergency, the authorities can also requisition people or private means.
A state of emergency “may be decided by the Council of Ministers, either in the event of imminent danger resulting from serious breaches of public order, or in the event of a public calamity, which may designate any natural disaster of a exceptional magnitude. By vocation, the state of emergency makes it possible to strengthen the powers of the civil authorities and to restrict certain public or individual freedoms”, summarizes the government site life–public.Fr.
Concretely, “with the state of emergency, it would be possible to put in place systematic curfews over larger areas and for longer periods”, explained to Franceinfo the professor of public law Serge Slama.
The extension of the state of emergency beyond twelve days can only be authorized by a law, passed by Parliament, which fixes its definitive duration.
Several times implemented during the Algerian war, the state of emergency has only been decreed four times since: in 1985, in New Caledonia, during the clashes which then affected the archipelago, in 2005, in the face of riots in the suburbs, at the initiative of the government of Dominique de Villepin, in 2015 after the Islamist attacks in Paris, and 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2005, the measures allowed by the state of emergency were in fact little applied: seven prefects had issued curfew orders, and in 23 departments, the retail sale of transportable containers of fuel and flammable materials.