7. Street demonstrations have sometimes been marred by outbreaks of violence that in some casesreached worrying levels. The law enforcement strategy and the use of potentially dangerous weapons havebeen called into question, and a new blueprint for law enforcement has been published.

8. In this context, the Assembly refers to the “Memorandum on maintaining public order and freedom ofassembly in the context of the “yellow vest” movement in France” published by the Commissioner for HumanRights of the Council of Europe on 26 February 2019, and takes note of the changes made to the lawenforcement strategy since 2021. Nevertheless, the Assembly is concerned by the finding made again by theCommissioner for Human Rights in her statement of 24 March 2023 that “in the context of the socialmovement against the pension reform in France, the freedoms of expression and assembly are beingexercised under worrying conditions,” thereby corroborating the concerns voiced by the Defender of Rights,the National Consultative Committee on Human Rights and several civil society organisations.

9. The Assembly is particularly alarmed by the high number of people injured during demonstrations,especially the number of injuries with serious long-term consequences. In this connection, it regrets the factthat the official statistics do not provide a clear picture of the number of people injured or killed by lawenforcement officers during demonstrations or the number of such officers sanctioned or having receivedcriminal convictions for unlawful acts of violence committed during the demonstrations. Having such statisticswould help dispel the feeling that unlawful violence by law enforcement officers goes unpunished. TheAssembly therefore calls on the authorities to grant access to this information.

10. The Assembly believes that further thought should be given to law enforcement techniques in France,in particular by drawing on experience in other European countries in order to refocus law enforcement on thetasks of prevention and of supervising the exercise of the freedom to demonstrate, under an approach aimedat calming tensions and protecting individual freedoms.

11. In the absence of comprehensive statistics, the Assembly notes that in several cases where the use ofweapons by law enforcement officers resulted in serious injuries or death, the courts have still not handeddown rulings more than four years after the events. In many cases, no further action was taken on complaintslodged against law enforcement officers because it could not be established that the injury was caused byinappropriate use of force, or owing to the difficulty of identifying the officer who had fired the weapon. TheAssembly therefore encourages the authorities to improve the criminal law treatment of cases of unlawfulviolence committed by law enforcement officers and to reform the police and gendarmerie inspectorates so asto improve perceptions of their independence and impartiality, while boosting the resources allocated to them.

12. The Assembly is concerned about the finding made in the report published in 2022 by the EuropeanCommission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) that little progress has been made to effectively preventor take action against certain types of misconduct by law enforcement officers that disproportionately affectpeople perceived as having an immigrant background or belonging to minority groups. A forceful reminder ofthis problem came with the wave of riots that followed the fatal shooting of a teenager by a policeman during aroad traffic check in June 2023. The Assembly therefore calls on the French authorities to open a wide-ranging debate about police practices and to take account of the recommendations by national andinternational institutions on the subject, in particular ECRI’s recommendation that the authorities introducewithout delay an effective system of recording identity checks by law enforcement officials, “as part of a policyaimed at strengthening mutual trust between them and the public and their contribution to preventing andcombating all forms of discrimination.”

13. The Assembly is concerned to note that the issue of mutual trust between law enforcement officials andthe public is highly polarised, with statements by some political and trade union representatives sometimesveering towards hate speech. In this connection, the Assembly refers to ECRI’s recommendation that “politicalfigures on all sides take a firm and public stance against any racist or LGBTI-phobic hate speech, andrespond with strong counter-speech.”

14. The Assembly congratulates France on the inclusive and transparent process followed in discussingand analysing the legal system, which led to an initial series of proposed legislative and institutional reformsbeing debated in parliament. In particular, the Assembly welcomes the announcement of an unprecedentedincrease in the financial and human resources allocated to the judicial system. The Assembly encourages theFrench Government to move ahead with the reform process under way by tabling the constitutional billnecessary for completing the reforms of the judicial system recommended by the Venice Commission and the

the article allowed “significant interference by the executive in the powers and role of the legislature …”. The Assembly will be interested to see the Venice Commission’s final opinion and invites the government and political forces in France to take these considerations into account in the forthcoming institutional debates.

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