The Senate has spoken, but the hardest vote on France’s rioters pay bill is still to come. The bill now goes to the National Assembly, where no bloc holds a majority, and where the arithmetic of a hung parliament will decide whether a measure passed comfortably in the upper house becomes law, or stalls in negotiation.
The Senate passed the bill 229 to 105 this week, under an accelerated procedure, after unrest in mid October that caused damage estimated at over 1 billion euros and saw nearly 2,400 people arrested in a single weekend. The Senate is conservative led, and the far right backed the bill there. The National Assembly is a different body, with a different balance of power, and a government that must build a majority vote by vote.
Marine Le Pen supports the bill, and she leads polls for next spring’s presidential election, which gives the measure a political tailwind that goes beyond its Senate majority. A bill that can be presented as tough on disorder, and that has support from the far right, is attractive to a government trying to show it can govern in a parliament where it lacks a majority. But support from the far right also makes the bill toxic to the left, which has warned of a serious infringement on the freedom to demonstrate, and to unions and student groups that have already mobilised against it.
What the Assembly must decide
The Assembly will face the same provisions that divided the Senate, but with higher stakes. The bill would make people who knowingly join a group preparing violence, or who knowingly stay after police order a violent crowd to disperse, liable to pay up to 10,000 euros for what others destroy, with deductions from family allowances, housing aid and other benefits after a final court ruling. The government also proposed protest bans for the most violent individuals, and the Senate approved rapid removal of social media content calling for disorder.
Amnesty International has urged that the bill be abandoned, and trade unions and student groups have warned in Le Monde of a serious infringement on the freedom to demonstrate. Those objections will be heard in the Assembly, where members face voters in their own constituencies, and where a vote for the bill is also a vote about what kind of protest France wants to allow. Members who back the bill will be asked, by constituents and by journalists, whether they believe a peaceful protester can be made to pay for a stranger’s violence.
The negotiation ahead
In a hung parliament, bills are rarely passed unchanged. The Assembly may amend the deduction provisions, narrow the definition of who can be held liable, or add safeguards for peaceful protesters who find themselves in a crowd that turns violent. Each amendment is a negotiation, and each negotiation is a chance for the bill to be weakened, strengthened or delayed.
The Senate vote showed that a majority for tough measures exists in one house. The Assembly vote will show whether that majority can be built again, in a house where no bloc can pass a bill alone, and where the next presidential election is already shaping every vote. France will know, within weeks, whether the rioters pay bill is a law, or a Senate statement that the Assembly chose not to follow.
