President François Hollande has announced that he will seek changes to the French constitution to give security forces greater powers to monitor and arrest terrorist suspects. Addressing a rare joint session of both houses of the French parliament in the Palace of Versailles– only the second in 160 years – he also announced that 8,500 extra jobs would be created in the police, judicial and border control service to combat the terrorist threat.
Mr Hollande, who received a standing ovation, said he would ask for a three months extension of the state of emergency that he declared at the weekend. The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would sail for the eastern Medititerranean, he said, to “triple” France’s air-strike capacity over Syria and Iraq.
Mr Hollande also announced that he would meet President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin “in the next few days” to push for an “effective” international alliance against Islamic State.
France, and the western world, were at war, he said, but it was vital that democratic countries should not trample their own commitments to “openness, tolerance and love of life” in responding to the threat from Islamic State.
“The Republic will not be destroyed by terrorism,” the President said. “The Republic will destroy terrorism.”
