France’s human rights record is under fire, with a new report warning that freedoms once taken for granted are being steadily chipped away.
A report from the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders – a partnership between the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) – says that democracy in France is sliding.
The report posits that state authorities are increasingly stigmatising civil society organisations and the causes they champion – particularly when those causes challenge established power.
It says this shift has been especially visible since 2017, following the formal end of the state of emergency that had been introduced after the 2015 terror attacks.
The authors of the report say that full democratic normality has not been restored.
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There has been a notable surge in administrative orders prohibiting demonstrations. These orders, the report warns, are often deployed excessively, with around 80 percent later overturned by the courts.
“It’s a bulwark,” Aïssa Rahmoune, secretary-general of FIDH, told RFI, “but how long will it last? In Nice, for instance, the prefecture issues bans so late that protesters have no realistic judicial recourse.”
These police bans are sometimes announced just hours before a protest is due to begin, which makes it almost impossible for organisers to lodge a timely legal appeal, even though French administrative courts often suspend such orders
Pushback
According to the report, even when protests are authorised, participation is increasingly constrained.
Under France’s 2019 anti-riot law, police can carry out checks and identity controls on potential protesters before they even join a march.
The report also warns over the normalisation of force, as France deploys one of the most militarised policing arsenals in Europe.
Demonstrations often end in the mass detention of participants – too often without any subsequent prosecution. In practice, authorities seem less interested in accountability than in dissuasion, the report says.
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In terms of pushback, however, the report notes there is an active and engaged human rights community, with civil society organisations drawing public attention to these trends.
The high rate of judicial pushback – including the high rate of bans being suspended – also shows that the French legal system remains intact and impartial, it says.
In 2023, for example, a court in Paris suspended a prefectural order banning non-declared demonstrations – explicitly citing its illegality and the impact on fundamental rights.
As Rahmoune notes, institutional checks and balances and civic resistance remain alive and well in France – and when under pressure, those checks gain a renewed purpose.
