The government has made it one of its priorities: faced with the multiplication of various facts related to drug trafficking, will the legislative response be the height? A transpartisan bill on drug trafficking, aimed at providing a legal and police tool box to “respond to the threat”, will be examined from this Tuesday, January 28 in the Senate.
The Ministers of Justice and the Interior, Gérald Darmanin and Bruno Retailleau, in any case display their frank support for this text presented in the upper Chamber. “I do not have to wait for the law to strengthen the means against narcotrafic,” launched the Keeper of the Seals Monday evening on TF1, erecting the fight against drug trafficking as an “absolute priority” in a circular of criminal policy sent in parallel to all prosecutors. “Submersion”, “point of rocking”, “Mexicanization” of France and need to “rearm” the country in the face of traffickers: Bruno Retailleau does not miss an opportunity, either, to recall the extent of the phenomenon.
The creation of a dedicated parquet
In the Senate, the observation was drawn up last year by two parliamentarians, Etienne Blanc (Les Républicains) and Jérôme Durain (Socialist Party), pilots of a long -term commission of inquiry. Their proposals of all kinds, ranging from the restructuring of the judicial system to the question of the immunity of the repentis, passing by a reform of the criminal procedure, appear in this highly anticipated text.
A solemn vote is scheduled for Tuesday, February 4 at the Luxembourg Palace, then the National Assembly will seize it, potentially during the week of March 17, according to several parliamentary sources. “We must give the Ministry of the Interior all the means to act to restore order in the Republic,” pleads the leader of the Senators LR Mathieu Darnaud.
Senators thus intend to try to restore the “symmetry” between the means of justice and those of the drug traffickers, while giving an “incarnation” to this struggle: it is the object of the creation of a “pnaco”, a national anti-crime parquet organized.
Gérald Darmanin, favorable to this platform proposal of senators, said he wished to set up on January 1, 2026. On the model of the anti-terrorist prosecution, the new structure would have a “monopoly on the most serious crimes”, or a few hundred files, as is a role of coordination of parquets. It would rely on an anti-structuring office (OFAST) with reinforced prerogatives, placed under the double guardianship of Beauvau and Bercy.
Force suspects to explain themselves on their lifestyle
The text also proposes the creation of an “injunction for unexplained wealth” procedure to oblige suspects to explain themselves on their lifestyle, or a new offense “of belonging to a criminal organization”. Another idea: an administrative freezing mechanism for narcotrafiating assets, to “hit them in the wallet”.
“We have to have tools to respond to the threat. It is not a usual delinquency, so we cannot be satisfied with the usual arsenal”, justifies Jérôme Durain, a socialist parliamentary who assumes to work hand in hand with the majority right in the Senate to answer this “subject that has become transpartisan”.
Forgotten prevention?
Certain measures are more irritating, such as the idea of creating a separate report – or “cooking file” – so as not to disclose some sensitive survey techniques to defense; Or the possibility given to prefects to pronounce “prohibitions to appear” on the points of deal.
This last point, “is a Revailleau measure”, wants to believe the environmental senator Guy Benarroche, whose group still reserves its position on the entire text. Like other elected officials and several associations, he fears “an attack on individual freedoms and the law of defense”, and regrets that the text leaves aside the component of prevention and public health.
The debates will therefore necessarily derive on the thorny question of the decriminalization of the use of drugs, but also on the lack of funding necessary for the restructuring of the repressive arsenal advocated by this text. The Ministry of Justice thus estimates the means necessary for the creation of the Pnaco to 130 million euros.