Emergency powers may be extended

PRESIDENT François Hollande wants to extend France's state of emergency for another three months, it has been reported.

MP Claude Bartolone, the president of the Assembly, said that M Hollande is 'very likely' to ask the French Parliament in the next few days to extend the country's state of emergency until May 26.

It is currently due to expire on February 26, but has been criticised over its 'excessive and disproportionate' restrictions on key rights.

The day before M Hollande met M Batolone to discuss a further extension of emergency powers, and speeding up related constitutional reform, four UN rights specialists urged France 'not to extend the state of emergency' after its current deadline amid concerns over restrictions of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and the right to privacy. In a statement, the experts said they had "stressed the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the state of emergency and surveillance laws" to government officials in Paris.

France's state of emergency was first imposed immediately after gunmen and suicide bombers launched a series of attacks in the capital on November 13, leaving 130 dead and hundreds injured. At the end of November, it was extended for three months to February, and new powers were added. Its emergency policing powers have allowed numerous police raids and house arrests, some of which the French government wants written into law as part of a constitutional reform package.

The proposed constitutional reform includes making any future state of emergency easier to declare and impose. More controversially, it will give authorities the power to strip French citizenship from people who have been 'definitively convicted' of terrorist offences, if they have another nationality - a plan that has divided the political parties.

See also: What does state of emergency mean?

Photo: Pablo029 / Wikimedia Commons