Real-time interception of data during France’s state of emergency
The Constitutional Council declared provisions of the French Emergency Act unconstitutional. Data Rights members participated in the case.
Entry into force
The French Constitutional Council partially repeals the law prolongating extraordinary state of emergency intelligence measures
The Constitutional Council declares part of the article contrary to the Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 1789.
The Council noted that the law extending the state of emergency measures “made it possible for a large number of people to be the subject of this [real-time interception] technique, without their link to the threat necessarily being close” without providing for any substantial limitation such as a maximum number of authorisations.
However, without justifying it, the Constitutional Council postponed the effects of its ruling, deciding that the immediate repeal of this recent law’s provision would entail “manifestly excessive consequences”.
Transmission to the Constitutional Council
The Council of State, which is the highest administrative court of the country, considers there is a doubt on constitutionality, suspends proceedings and transmits the question to the Constitutional Council.
Case filing before the French Council of State
The sole purpose of the filing of a case before the Council of State was to refer the matter to the Constitutional Council via the priority preliminary ruling request of constitutionality (QPC) procedure.
Repeal request
There is no procedural avenue in France that allows a citizen to appeal directly to the Constitutional Council if a law contrary to the Constitution has been promulgated. The steps followed in this case are therefore:
- Asking the government to repeal a regulatory text related to the law contrary to the Constitution (in our case, a decree implementing the Intelligence Law, see example below);
- Await for a negative response or, in the absence of a response, await for the end of the legal period allowing us to deem that the absence of a response constituting an implicit refusal decision.
The government’s refusal to repeal a regulatory provision may be the subject of an appeal for “excess of power” before the Council of State.
Letter requesting the repeal
Cases N° QPC 2017-648 & 405792
We worked with non-profit Internet service providers French Data Network, the FDN Federation and the Quadrature du Net organisation, togehter with the Spinosi & Sureau law firm.