Under a constitutional change initiated by President François Hollande in the wake of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, the French government will be able to strip of their citizenship dual nationals who are convicted of “crimes against the nation’s well-being,” a new legal category meant to include acts of terrorism.
The proposal provoked an uproar among civil liberties advocates and unease in a large section of Hollande’s own Socialist party, fierce opposition from the far left and even from some leaders of the center right. To opponents, it looks like an idea straight out of the repertoire of the far-right National Front.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls didn’t help smooth things over this weekend when, in an interview with Journal du Dimanche, he seemed to mock “the part of the left that gets lost in its grand values.”
His Socialist predecessor Jean-Marc Ayrault, as well as Lille mayor and former Hollande rival Martine Aubry, immediately took to Twitter to reaffirm their opposition to citizenship-stripping.
The critics’ first argument is that Hollande’s proposed change would create a separate class of French-born citizens – since it would only hit individuals holding two or more passports.
More than 3 million French-born citizens are also nationals of another country. Citizenship can’t be taken away from someone holding only a French passport, since international treaties ban governments from making people stateless.
The French government’s answer is that it can already legally take citizenship away from foreign-born people who are later nationalized French and have committed crimes, so the change would in reality harmonize the conditions of dual nationals.
The second argument against the proposed change is that the authors of terror attacks — some of whom have been known to burn their passports when they get to Syria — are unlikely to be deterred by the measure.
The government itself is admitting that much. “Everyone understands that efficiency is not the primary concern here,” Valls said in a speech on December 23. “This is a highly symbolic measure. A heavy sanction the French nation has the right to inflict on those who betray it.”
Surprised by the opposition to Hollande’s proposal, the government hinted early last week that it would be pulled before the constitutional reform goes to parliament in early February. In an interview with Algerian radio, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira — who made no secret of her opposition to the change — had even announced that the government would stand down.
The next day, Hollande decided that the measure he had announced in his solemn speech to parliament right after the November attacks would remain part of the constitutional reform.
Giving up, a government adviser said, would have exposed the French president to conservative and far-right criticism that he was softening his stance to placate internal opposition in the Socialist party.
The same adviser said the government would have backed down if the Conseil d’Etat, the country’s highest administrative court, which also serves as the official legal adviser to the government, had come out and criticized citizenship-stripping. “Note that I didn’t say we were hoping for that,” the government adviser said.
Instead of which the Conseil d’Etat, in a convoluted legal argument, gave a qualified green light to the measure, which it said would probably be unconstitutional if passed by a simple law — hence the need to formally inscribe it in the Constitution.
However, said the Conseil d’Etat, once passed, the reform will still be subjected to possible appeals to the European Court of Human Rights. And in any case, it is likely to have “little practical effect.”
The question now is whether opposition from the left will prevent the constitutional reform from being passed in February by the joint session of parliament known as Congress. It needs three fifths of the votes to be adopted, and Hollande in any case would need the votes from the right to see it through.
One of Hollande’s closest friends, Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer who heads the Socialist party’s ethics commission, hinted on Tuesday that there might be a way to compromise if the current text was amended.
The government should “probably re-write, re-think the text and it shouldn’t be voted hastily, because anything touching the nationality code is sacred.” he said in a radio interview, questioning whether it was necessary to change the Constitution to enact the change.
Manuel Valls took to Facebook on Monday night to refute his critics’ arguments, noting that similar possibilities to take away citizenship existed in countries such as the U.K. and Canada.
Valls also disputed the idea that the move had far-right associations, noting that the first time such steps were taken in France was in the mid-19th century, to sanction slave owners who refused to accept the 1848 abolition of slavery.
Besides the measure on citizenship, MPs will be asked to give constitutional force to the notion of “state of emergency,” as implemented in France on the evening of November 13. So far it has been based on a rarely-used law dating from 1955.
In this battle of principles against symbols over the citizenship question, Hollande continues to play the presidential card, taking on his party’s left wing in order to dispel any suspicion that he is soft on terrorism and security, with the 2017 presidential election firmly in sight.
He can even afford to pass the constitutional reform with the right’s votes against defectors from his own party, and make a victory out of what would in other times look like a political defeat. “He will look like the president above the fray, who is not prey to his party’s ideology and only looks at national interest,” says one of his Socialist allies.
The question — both in the constitutional reform debate and the presidential elections — is whether the votes Hollande may get from the right for standing firm will outnumber those he loses on the left for appearing a bit too cynical for comfort.
